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Can we sell our old Outlook emails and Teams chats, and how do we export them?

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Data Licensing Report may earn a referral fee when a business that applies through this site completes a deal with a participating provider. Telegraph Lab is a commercially affiliated provider: the owner of Data Licensing Report is paid commission on some Telegraph Lab deals, and does not own Telegraph Lab. Providers are listed alphabetically and described from their own public materials using the same fields.

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  1. Do AI buyers want Outlook email and Teams chats?
  2. How long does Microsoft 365 keep our email?
  3. What happened to the mailboxes of people who left?
  4. How do we export mailboxes and Teams chats in bulk?
  5. Which buyers say they take Outlook and Teams data?
  6. Can the sample tool read our PST files?
  7. We moved off our own Exchange server around 2017. Is the older email in Microsoft 365?
  8. Our IT company runs Microsoft 365. Who controls the export?
  9. Can a buyer connect to Microsoft 365 instead of us exporting?
  10. Sources
Why trust us

Often, yes. Many providers that license company records name Outlook or Teams, and the Spirit Airlines records Google bid $10 million for in August 2026 held about 500 million Teams chats and collaboration records. The limit is what your account still holds, since a departed user’s mail is deleted 30 days after removal unless a hold was set.

Do AI buyers want Outlook email and Teams chats?

Yes. Most of the Spirit Airlines package was Microsoft 365 content. Bloomberg Law reported that it held about 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats and collaboration records, and that Google was named the winning bidder at $10 million (Bloomberg Law). Spirit had closed, and as of late September 2026 the sale still needed the bankruptcy court’s approval (Moneywise).

Providers that work with operating companies describe the same records, as of October 2026. Polyshares’ Outlook guide says “Exchange mailboxes hold a company’s working record: customer requests, supplier negotiations, internal approvals and escalations, each with sender, recipients and timestamps”, and its Teams guide says “Teams chats and channel threads record how work gets coordinated in companies that run on Microsoft 365”. Scale AI, Troveo and Nyne list Teams and Outlook side by side (Scale AI, Troveo, Nyne).

Microsoft stores Teams chat messages “in a hidden folder in the mailbox of each user included in the chat”, and channel messages in the team’s group mailbox, so one mailbox search finds both. Polyshares’ intake asks for Outlook in gigabytes, primary plus archive mailbox, with seats counted as licensed mailboxes plus former employees’ inactive mailboxes, and for Teams in messages.

How long does Microsoft 365 keep our email?

Until a user deletes it, plus 14 days. Mail stays in a mailbox indefinitely; once a user empties it from Deleted Items, Exchange Online keeps it in a hidden Recoverable Items folder for 14 days by default (an admin can raise this to 30), and then “the item is removed from Exchange Online”.

Microsoft 365 Business BasicMicrosoft 365 Business Standard (marketed on microsoft.com as 'Business Standard with Copilot')Microsoft 365 Business Premium (marketed on microsoft.com as 'Business Premium with Copilot')Microsoft 365 E3Microsoft 365 E5
Default retention

Mail is kept until a user deletes it: Microsoft's Exchange Online limits table lists the Deleted Items folder retention period as 'No limit' for Business Basic (and every other listed plan). Items removed from Deleted Items are kept 14 days by default; admins can raise this to 30 days.[1] as of

Same mailbox defaults as Business Basic. Exchange Online's Default MRM Policy is applied automatically to new users and has no tag that empties Deleted Items, so deleted mail stays in Deleted Items until the user empties it. Its 'Default 2 years move to archive' tag moves mail but does not delete it.[2] as of

Mail is kept until deleted (Deleted Items 'No limit'), with a 14-day default (max 30) Recoverable Items window, the same as the other plans. Business Premium includes archiving, so the Default MRM Policy's 'Default 2 years move to archive' tag moves older mail into the archive rather than deleting it.[2] as of

Same Exchange defaults as the business plans: the default deleted-item retention is 14 days (max 30), and Deleted Items itself has no time limit.[3] as of

Mailbox defaults are the same as E3 and the business plans. E5 differs in compliance tooling, not default retention: by Microsoft's account, Audit (Premium) keeps audit logs for one year by default for licensed users, against 180 days for Audit (Standard).[4] as of

Configured retention

Microsoft Purview licensing lists Business Basic for Teams chat/channel retention policies only. Organization-wide or location-wide retention policies for mail and files, and creating retention labels, are licensed to E3/E5 and Business Premium, not Business Basic. The Exchange Online service description also shows 'Manual retention policies, labels, and tags' as No for Business Basic/Standard. Messaging Records Management (MRM) is shown as Yes.[4] as of

The Exchange Online service description shows 'Manual retention policies, labels, and tags' = No for Business Basic/Standard and Yes for Business Premium and E3/E5. Purview licensing adds that Business Standard does get Teams chat/channel retention policies.[5] as of

Business Premium is licensed for organization-wide/location-wide Purview retention policies (mail, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams) and for creating retention labels. Auto-applied labels, adaptive scopes and record declaration are listed only for E5-class licences.[4] as of

E3 is licensed for org-wide/location-wide retention policies across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams, and for manual retention labels. Auto-apply labels and records management need E5.[4] as of

Only E5-class licences (and Purview Suite add-ons) cover auto-applied retention labels, adaptive scopes and marking items as records or regulatory records.[4] as of

Visible vs retained

Users stop seeing a deleted item once it leaves Deleted Items, but it stays recoverable in the hidden Recoverable Items folder for the deleted-item retention period (14 days by default). When that period ends the item is removed for good. Business Basic includes no Litigation/In-Place Hold to extend this; see plan_limits.[3] as of

Teams chat messages are stored in a hidden folder in each participant's Exchange mailbox, not only in the Teams client. A copy can therefore outlive one participant's deletion or departure, and it is searchable by eDiscovery.[6] as of

Once a retention policy or hold applies, users can still delete or edit items and the items vanish from their view. A copy is kept in hidden storage: Recoverable Items for mail, the Preservation Hold library for SharePoint/OneDrive, and SubstrateHolds for Teams. The copy stays searchable by eDiscovery until the retention period ends.[7] as of

Litigation Hold (included through Exchange Online Plan 2) keeps deleted items and the original versions of edited items, invisible to the user, until the hold is removed or for a set duration.[8] as of

Collecting SharePoint document versions and cloud attachments (the linked file as shared, not just a link) is listed only under Premium eDiscovery feature support (E5). Without Premium, exports show what is in place rather than the version history.[9] as of

Admin rights needed

Searching and exporting tenant-wide content needs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery permissions: the eDiscovery Manager role group (eDiscovery Manager or eDiscovery Administrator), or role groups such as Compliance Administrator or Organization Management that carry the Compliance Search/Export/Hold roles.[10] as of

Exporting search results requires the Export role. In Purview that role is held by the eDiscovery Manager/Administrator role groups and by Compliance Administrator/Organization Management.[10] as of

Placing holds requires the Hold role, held by the eDiscovery Manager role group and Compliance Administrator/Organization Management. The Exchange Online service description lists 'In-Place Hold, Litigation Hold' = Yes for Business Premium.[10] as of

An eDiscovery Administrator, a member of the eDiscovery Manager role group, can access all cases and their data. A plain eDiscovery Manager sees only the cases they belong to.[10] as of

The same Purview role groups apply. Premium features (review sets, analytics, OCR, threading) are switched on per case by eDiscovery Administrators when the organization holds E5 licences.[9] as of

Export method

Microsoft's current eDiscovery guide says the admins and users who work eDiscovery cases need a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licence. The Exchange Online service description still lists 'eDiscovery content search' as available on Business Basic/Standard. A Business Basic tenant may therefore need to license its eDiscovery operator with E3/E5 before doing a bulk PST export. Users can export their own mail to .pst from new Outlook (see export_paths).[11] as of

There is no end-user export of work Teams chats. Bulk export of mail, Teams and files goes through Purview eDiscovery: create a case, run a search, export, then download the package. Microsoft's export page says the eDiscovery user needs a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 licence, which Business Standard is not.[12] as of

Purview eDiscovery (case, search, export, download). Microsoft's Purview eDiscovery licensing table names E3/E5-class licences and does not name Business Premium. The get-started and export pages say eDiscovery users need an E3 or E5 licence. Business Premium tenants should confirm whether the operator account needs an E3/E5 licence.[11] as of

E3 gets eDiscovery (Standard): cases, searches, holds and exports for email and for sites/files. Microsoft's Purview licensing table marks eDiscovery (Premium) as 'No' for Microsoft 365 E3.[4] as of

eDiscovery (Premium) is 'Yes' for E5 and 'No' for Microsoft 365 E3 in Microsoft's licensing table. It adds review sets, which let a curated, deduplicated set be prepared before export.[4] as of

Export formats

Purview eDiscovery exports mail as .pst files (one PST per mailbox can be chosen) or as individual .msg files. SharePoint/OneDrive content comes out as native document copies, and Teams conversations can be threaded into HTML transcripts.[12] as of

Export package size is configurable. PSTs can be capped at 1, 2, 5 (default) or 10 GB, and .zip packages at 2, 10 (default), 20 or 40 GB.[12] as of

eDiscovery can include Teams and Viva Engage messages from a 12-hour window around each hit and thread them into HTML transcripts. Mail can be exported as PST or .msg.[12] as of

Mail can be exported into one PST per mailbox. The primary mailbox and any archive are merged into that single PST, and the folder hierarchy can be kept.[12] as of

Mail can be exported as individual .msg files, optionally named after the email subject. Folder paths can be condensed to fit Windows' 259-character limit.[12] as of

Plan limits

100 GB primary mailbox and a 50 GB archive per user. There is no auto-expanding archive, and In-Place Hold/Litigation Hold are not included; the Exchange Online Archiving add-on adds them.[13] as of

100 GB primary mailbox and a 50 GB archive per user. Microsoft lists Business Basic and Business Standard as needing the Exchange Online Archiving add-on for auto-expanding archive and Litigation/In-Place Hold.[14] as of

100 GB primary mailbox. The archive starts at 100 GB and auto-expands up to 1.5 TB, a limit that includes Recoverable Items. Microsoft forbids using journaling or forwarding to archive other users' mail into a mailbox.[1] as of

100 GB mailbox and an archive up to 1.5 TB (auto-expanding). The Recoverable Items quota is 30 GB, rising automatically to 100 GB when the mailbox is on hold or under a retention policy.[3] as of

100 GB mailbox. The archive starts at 100 GB and auto-expands to 1.5 TB.[1] as of

What Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online/Outlook, Teams, SharePoint/OneDrive, Teams meeting recordings) holds: Email (Exchange Online mailbox), Teams 1:1, group and meeting chats, Teams channel messages, Teams meeting recordings and transcripts, SharePoint and OneDrive files, Audit log (activity metadata), Whole tenant after the subscription ends.

The table gives Microsoft’s rules by plan; these four settings in your own account decide what is left:

  • Archive mailboxes. Where an archive mailbox is turned on, Microsoft’s default policy moves mail older than two years into it rather than deleting it (Microsoft). Older mail missing from someone’s inbox may be there, and an eDiscovery export merges the primary mailbox and any archive into one PST per person.
  • Holds protect only what is still there. A retention policy or Litigation Hold keeps deleted and edited items from the day it is applied; it cannot bring back mail purged before then. That is why the plan limits row matters: Business Basic and Business Standard need the Exchange Online Archiving add-on before a hold is possible.
  • Teams meeting recordings expire. Recordings and transcripts expire after 120 days by default, and a change to that setting “only affect[s] newly created recordings and transcripts”.
  • Teams chat has no published default expiry. Microsoft’s Teams retention page gives no default deletion period for chats; a retention policy, if your admin created one, decides (Microsoft).

Look at the oldest message in the mailbox and archive of two or three long-serving people. Ask whoever runs your account which plan each mailbox is on and whether any retention policy deletes mail, and record the oldest date you find in your data inventory.

What happened to the mailboxes of people who left?

If someone only removed the license and set no hold, the mail is gone after 30 days. Microsoft says that when you remove or delete a license, “the former employee’s email, contacts, and calendar are retained for 30 days, and are then deleted permanently”.

How the person was offboarded What is left Can it be exported?
License removed or account deleted, no hold Mail for 30 days, then nothing; a deleted mailbox is recoverable within 30 days Only within those 30 days
A hold or retention policy applied before the account was deleted An inactive mailbox, kept for the retention period, with no license needed Yes, through eDiscovery
Mailbox converted to a shared mailbox All existing email and calendar; the license can go under 50 GB, but the account must stay Yes
OneDrive of a user left unlicensed Since July 1, 2026: read-only at day 60, archived at day 93, out of eDiscovery at day 275, open to deletion at day 365 even with holds, unless pay-as-you-go billing is on (Microsoft) Through eDiscovery until day 275

For anyone still to leave, convert the mailbox to shared or, on a plan that allows it, apply a hold before the license is removed. A departed person’s Teams chats also sit in the other participants’ mailboxes; Does my company’s data qualify? explains what survives when a mailbox is gone.

How do we export mailboxes and Teams chats in bulk?

Through Microsoft Purview eDiscovery. Outlook exports one mailbox at a time, and Teams’ self-service export is for personal accounts only. The admin steps, the license question for whoever runs the export, the 14-day download window and the file types are set out in How much work is it to license company data? Two points that page does not cover:

  • Count before you export. An eDiscovery search can be limited to a date range with a “Between” condition (Microsoft), and its statistics give hit counts by location, with a downloadable report covering every location (Microsoft). Run it once for each year of history and you have counts by year and mailbox, which is what a buyer asks about first, without exporting anything.
  • Split big jobs. Microsoft cancels an export that runs “for more than seven days without completing”, and each mailbox comes out as one PST with its archive merged in. For a large account, export by date range or by groups of mailboxes, and cap the PST size, which Microsoft allows at 1, 2, 5 or 10 GB.

Which buyers say they take Outlook and Teams data?

Twelve of the 25 buyers and intermediaries Data Licensing Report tracks name Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365 or another Microsoft app on their own pages, as of October 2026. The introducers among them put you in touch with a buyer rather than paying you.

Provider What it is What its own page names
Avelence Introducer; does not buy data Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, Dynamics (source)
Corpus Licenses directly Microsoft 365 (source)
Handshake AI Licenses directly Outlook (source)
License My Data Introducer “Email, calendar, Slack and Teams” (source)
Mercor Licenses directly Teams, Outlook (source)
Miro Advisory Introducer; does not buy data Microsoft Teams, email, SharePoint (source)
Nyne Licenses directly Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint (source)
Polyshares Licenses directly Email in its list of operational data; publishes export guides for Outlook and Teams (source)
Scale AI Licenses directly Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint (source)
Sell My Business Data Introducer Teams, Outlook, SharePoint (source)
Telegraph Lab (affiliated with this site) Licenses directly Teams (source)
Troveo Licensing agent Microsoft Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, Dynamics (source)

Four more name email or messages but no system: Scrimdata licenses “inboxes”; SimpleClosure’s AssetHub, a wind-down platform that said on September 3, 2026 it also takes operating companies, lists email; Replay lists messages; and Appen lists “Messaging & meetings” as a typical source of decision records (Appen). micro1 asks for procedures and process documents and names no email or chat system (micro1). Each one’s full terms are in the buyers directory.

Can the sample tool read our PST files?

Not yet. A .pst is Outlook’s own file format, and so is the .msg that eDiscovery offers as its other option; Data Licensing Report’s free sample tool reads mail as .mbox or .eml. Three ways to get there:

  1. A few messages. In the new Outlook for Windows, choose More actions > Save as on a message to save it as an .eml file (Microsoft). That suits a quick look, not a mailbox.
  2. A whole mailbox. Open the mailbox in a mail program that exports .mbox, such as Thunderbird or Apple Mail, as the sample page describes, or have your IT firm convert the .pst files to .mbox or .eml.
  3. Teams. The tool does not read the HTML transcripts eDiscovery produces; take Teams message counts from the eDiscovery statistics instead.

Conversion is only for looking at your own records first. What format a buyer takes for delivery is part of the scope you agree with it.

We moved off our own Exchange server around 2017. Is the older email in Microsoft 365?

Only if it was migrated or imported. Microsoft’s cutover, staged and hybrid migrations move “All email, calendar, and contacts” from Exchange, an IMAP migration moves only mail folders, and old .pst files come in only through a separate import. Does my company’s data qualify? covers where the pre-migration years usually end up and what to ask your IT firm.

Microsoft 365 itself can answer the question. Run an eDiscovery search across all mailboxes and their archives with a date range ending at your migration date, and look at the statistics. A count near zero means the older years did not come across; a count that is low but not zero suggests only some mailboxes, or only recent folders, did.

If the old server or its backup drives still exist, keep them until you have decided. Microsoft ended support for Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 on October 14, 2025, and the paid extended security updates it offered after that stop after October 2026 (BleepingComputer), so have your IT firm recover mail from an old server offline rather than bringing it back onto your network.

Our IT company runs Microsoft 365. Who controls the export?

Whoever holds the eDiscovery role. If an IT firm administers your account, that may be one of its staff rather than one of yours. Microsoft’s eDiscovery Administrator can “Access all cases” in the organization, and whoever runs a search sees and downloads every mailbox in its scope. Who owns the account, and how to check what admin rights a partner holds, are covered in How much work is it? For the export itself, settle three things in writing:

  • Who runs it. Name the person, and whether they work for you or for the IT firm.
  • What is in scope. The mailboxes, the date range and whether Teams is included, so the search covers no more than you agreed to license.
  • Where the files go. Microsoft deletes its copy of an export package after 14 days, but the downloaded .pst files stay wherever they were saved. Agree where they are kept and when the IT firm deletes its copies.

Can a buyer connect to Microsoft 365 instead of us exporting?

A connection is possible, but the app would typically read mail and Teams through Microsoft’s APIs, whose terms limit what it may pass on. The Microsoft APIs Terms of Use, last updated October 2025, say developers may not “Redistribute or resell, or sublicense access to, the Microsoft APIs, any data obtained using the Microsoft APIs, or any other Microsoft Offering accessed through the Microsoft APIs”. They do not mention AI training. Reading Teams chats needs Microsoft’s protected Teams Export APIs, with application permissions such as Chat.Read.All that an administrator approves.

Microsoft’s API terms bind the app’s developer. For an eDiscovery export your own administrator runs, the document to read is your Microsoft subscription agreement. When a provider proposes a connection, find out whose app it is, which permissions it requests, and how passing the data on fits these terms. Is it legal to sell company emails and records? sets platform terms beside your other contracts, and the guide puts every step from inventory to payment in order.

Which industries run on Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online/Outlook, Teams, SharePoint/OneDrive, Teams meeting recordings)?

Providers named on this page

Sources

  1. Exchange Online limits, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  2. Default Retention Policy in Exchange Online, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  3. Recoverable Items folder in Exchange Online, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  4. Microsoft Purview service description, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  5. Exchange Online service description, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  6. Learn about retention for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  7. Learn about retention policies and retention labels, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  8. Place a mailbox on Litigation Hold, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  9. Learn about eDiscovery, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  10. Assign permissions in eDiscovery, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  11. Get started with eDiscovery, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  12. Export search results in eDiscovery, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .
  13. Compare All Microsoft 365 Plans (Business), Microsoft. Accessed .
  14. Exchange Online Archiving service description, Microsoft. Published . Accessed .

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