Microsoft Teams Data: Export, eDiscovery and Licensing for AI

A company gets its Microsoft Teams data out through two administrator routes, the Teams Export APIs in Microsoft Graph and a Microsoft Purview eDiscovery export, and either output can become the raw material of an AI data license once rights, consent and personal data are cleared. The Export APIs need an active Teams license for every exported user, a Purview export needs a Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 or E5 license for the exporting user, and the shortest deletion window is 21 days for a message a user deleted (checked 2026-11-09). This page covers company tenants, not personal Teams accounts.

Teams is one input to AI training data licensing, and the court record shows the scale at stake: the Spirit Airlines asset schedule lists 500,000,000 Teams items. Seven AI data programs name Teams among the systems they take, and each is a program's own claim, not an offer. The page takes the routes, the windows, the people in the archive and the steps in that order.

How we checked this page: Microsoft's own documentation, court filings and each program's own page were read on the dates shown, and the method is set out in how we source, date and check every figure.

What Teams Data Means in an AI Data License

Teams data is the content a company's tenant stores in chats, channel conversations and meetings, and in a license the company, not each employee and not Microsoft, is the party that grants rights to it. The grant covers a de-identified copy for a defined term, so the tenant keeps running and the original stays with the company.

Microsoft is the vendor of the source system here, not a buyer of the tenant's content. Microsoft states that prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph in Microsoft 365 Copilot are not used to train its foundation large language models (Microsoft, checked 2026-11-09), and its Products and Services Data Protection Addendum has a latest English version dated 2026-11-01. The legal name of the vendor is Microsoft Corporation.

The largest count of Teams content in a data sale sits in a bankruptcy court. The asset schedule to the Spirit Airlines sale agreement (Dkt. 1463, Exhibit A-2) counts 500,000,000 Teams items as included assets, next to 100,000,000 emails, inside a de-identified dataset. As of 2026-11-09 the sale is not approved: Google LLC is the successful bidder at USD 10,000,000, Mercor.io Corporation the alternate bidder at USD 7,500,000, the auction took place on 2026-08-14, and a hearing is set for 2026-11-17 (Dkt. 1779). The schedule says "Teams Count", so the unit is items, not messages or chats. The sale is covered in Spirit Airlines' data archive sale in bankruptcy.

Three Routes to Get Data Out of a Teams Tenant

Teams content leaves a tenant through the Export APIs, through a Purview eDiscovery export, or through a buyer program's read-only connection, and each route differs in license, output and control. The table compares the three as of 2026-11-09.

Teams Export APIs: License, Metering and Deleted Items

The Teams Export APIs are Microsoft Graph endpoints for bulk export, and they need an active Teams license for every user whose data is exported but no Purview Data Loss Prevention plan. Guides that quote per-message fees describe the old metered models, because Microsoft states that the Teams APIs are no longer metered from 2025-08-25.

• Metering: the Export APIs are unmetered since 2025-08-25, so older per-message fee guides are outdated.
• User-deleted messages: retrievable through the APIs for 21 days.
• Deleted teams, channels and users: deleted teams and channels, deleted users and inactive users stay retrievable for 30 days.
• Recordings and transcripts: returned only for private scheduled meetings, listed by organizer (see the meetings section below).

Purview eDiscovery for Teams Content

A Purview eDiscovery export searches Teams content alongside mail and files and packages the results for retrieval, and the exporting user needs a Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 or E5 license. The mail and file side of the same tool belongs to Microsoft 365 (Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive) exports, and this page covers Purview only for Teams content.

The export package expires 14 days after it is ready, and an export that runs too long is cancelled automatically after 7 days. PST packages come in sizes of 1, 2, 5 (the default) or 10 GB. A licensing export is therefore a defined search by channel, user and date range, not a copy of everything the tenant holds.

Recorded Teams Meetings: What the Export Covers

The Export APIs return meeting recordings and transcripts only for private scheduled meetings, listed by organizer, so meetings of any other kind fall outside that route. Microsoft states the average size for a 30 to 60 minute meeting at about 350 MB for a recording and about 300 KB for a transcript, which makes recordings the heavy part of any archive.

Every speaker in a recording is a licensed voice, and a recording is also a communication. Under 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d) interception is not unlawful where a party has given prior consent, unless it is done for a criminal or tortious purpose. The call and meeting recording consent rules by jurisdiction set out who must agree before a recording is passed on.

Retention Windows Before Teams Data Is Gone

Teams data has hard expiry points, from 7 days for a stalled eDiscovery export to 180 days after a Microsoft 365 subscription is cancelled, and a company that may license its archive exports before the first one passes. The table joins the Export API windows, the Purview limits and the subscription lifecycle, as of 2026-11-09 (the Microsoft 365 lifecycle page is dated 2026-06-08).

The windows run on different clocks: the first four start with an action in the tenant, the last two with the state of the subscription. A closing company meets the subscription clock first, which is why the page on selling data from a shut-down or defunct company treats the vendor deletion dates as part of the plan.

Who Is in a Teams Archive and What Must Be Cleared First

A Teams archive holds the words of employees, former employees, guests from other companies and customers, and each group brings its own clearance before any license. The two groups below differ in the legal basis they need.

Staff Messages, Workplace Monitoring Rules and Works Councils

Staff chats are the bulk of most Teams archives, and the rules that reach them depend on where the staff work. In the United States, 18 U.S.C. 2702 bars providers of services to the public from divulging stored content, with an exception for lawful consent in 2702(b)(3), and a company's internal systems are generally not services to the public, so the Stored Communications Act is less of a barrier for a tenant than for a consumer platform (statute text, 2024 edition).

In the EU, Article 88(2) of the GDPR (in force 2016-05-24, applying from 2018-05-25) requires national employment rules to include safeguards on monitoring systems at the workplace. In Germany, section 87(1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act (BetrVG) gives the works council co-determination over technical devices suited to monitor employee behavior or performance, which can reach export, labeling or de-identification tooling, and under section 87(2) the Einigungsstelle decides when the parties do not agree (checked 2026-11-09).

The notice and consent sequence has its own page. Staff notice and the consent question are covered under employee notice and consent when licensing internal communications.

External Guests, Customers and Recorded Speech in Teams

Guests and customers who wrote in shared channels or spoke in meetings never agreed to the company's employment terms, so their content needs its own basis or comes out of the export. Where the export tool allows it, a user filter at export time excludes guest accounts, and customer contracts with confidentiality clauses can bar a license of what a customer wrote; no figure on how often this happens is on record.

Recorded speakers outside the company are in the same position: the consent point from the recordings section applies to them by reference, and a recording with an external speaker is cleared or left out.

Removing Names and Identifiers From a Teams Export

A Teams export carries identities in display names, mentions, user IDs, attachments and meeting metadata as well as in message text, so de-identification is part of the export plan, not a later cleanup. Message text alone is not the whole record: a channel name or a file title can name a person or a customer.

Three programs state how they handle it (checked 2026-11-09). Mercor states automated extraction and de-identification, Scale AI states that it anonymizes inside the company's environment before extraction, and Ooak Data states in-house anonymization with raw data deleted within 30 days of delivery. Methods and standards are set out under PII removal and de-identification before licensing data.

The Spirit Airlines Bill of Sale shows one court-supervised model. It requires a Deidentification Agent acceptable to or designated by the buyer, applies the de-identification standard of the California Consumer Privacy Act and, for health data, 45 CFR 164.514, puts the cost on the buyer and excludes personal data from the assets.

AI Data Programs That Name Teams as a Source

Seven AI data programs name Teams among the systems they take, each on its own page and each checked November 9, 2026; naming a system is not an offer. The table lists them alphabetically, with the process or license point each states.

Four intermediaries, Avelence, Corpus Bridge, Sell Business Data and Sureform, also list Teams among the systems they handle; they arrange or advise on sales and are not buyers. Polyshares shows two license wordings on its own pages, and both appear in the table because the pages contradict each other.

Licensing Teams Data or Not: Benefits, Risks, Downsides and Alternatives

Licensing a Teams archive turns records the company already holds into license income, and it also puts staff, guest and customer words into a buyer's training set for the license term. The four lists weigh both sides, including the choice to do nothing.

Benefits

• Income from an archive that already exists, with no figure promised here.
• A license, not a sale: Turing states that ownership does not change hands.
• Scope that can be limited by channel, date range or user.

Risks

• Objections from staff and works councils over monitoring-capable tooling.
• Re-identification of people from context that survives de-identification.
• Perpetual or exclusive grants, as one program's track-record wording describes.

Downsides

• Export, review and clearance work before anything is delivered.
• Windows that force decisions early, since some deleted items are gone after 21 or 30 days.
• A 90-day period in which one program is the only seller.

Alternatives

• License a subset, such as meeting transcripts or one channel.
• Wait for the court ruling in the Spirit sale before setting terms.
• Do not license at all and keep the archive for its original purpose.

The whole-company decision is set out under should you sell or license your data to AI companies.

Steps From a Teams Tenant to a Signed Data License

A Teams license runs from an inventory of what the tenant holds to delivery of a de-identified export, and the Teams-specific work sits in steps 2 to 4.

1. Inventory the tenant: teams, channels, chats, guests, meeting recordings and the subscription status.
2. Check the licenses (Teams per exported user for the APIs, Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 for Purview) and start an early export if a deletion window is near.
3. Give staff and works-council notice where the rules in the staff section apply.
4. Exclude guests, privileged material and customer-confidential content.
5. De-identify names, mentions, user IDs and metadata.
6. Deliver the export and record what left the tenant.

Steps 5 and 6 follow the general seller process, not a Teams-specific one.

Where Teams Sits Among Source Systems and the Seller Process

Teams is one of the source systems a company exports from, and the same license questions return for Slack, Jira and the other workplace tools. The parent page covers export rights and mechanics by source system, with Slack data and AI training and Jira data and licensing issue history as the closest siblings. Chat as a data type across tools sits under selling chat messages for AI training, and the full process is in the guide to sell or license company data to AI companies.

• Licensing a company email archive
• Meeting recordings and transcripts for AI training
• Zoom recordings
• Buyer connectors vs native exports
• Employee data and AI training rules by jurisdiction
• Works council co-determination in data sales
• ECPA, the Wiretap Act and stored communications
• Customer consent and confidentiality clauses
• The data manifest
• Delivering licensed data to an AI buyer

This page is information, not legal advice.

Teams Data From a Closed or Insolvent Company

When the company is closed or insolvent, the person who signs a Teams license is an officer, trustee or administrator, and the subscription lifecycle decides how long the data survives. The 30, 90 and 180 day dates in the retention table start once the subscription expires or is cancelled. The Spirit sale shows an officeholder route, with the same Teams items still awaiting approval as of 2026-11-09, as covered in Spirit Airlines' data archive sale in bankruptcy. The general route is described under data assets in insolvency. A separate page covers exporting company data before shutting down.

Program and Profile Pages Named on This Page

The program terms above come from each program's own page, checked November 9, 2026. Further pages: company data partnership programs, who buys AI training data and AI data partnership payouts and program terms compared. Program names without a profile page: Centific, Nyne, Ooak Data, Polyshares, Scale AI, Turing Project Lazarus and Microsoft.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an administrator export all Teams chats in a company?

Yes, an administrator can export Teams content for the whole tenant through the Teams Export APIs or a Purview eDiscovery export, subject to the license each route requires. The APIs need an active Teams license per exported user, and a Purview export needs a Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 or E5 license for the exporting user (checked 2026-11-09).

How do I export Teams chats with Microsoft Purview?

Run an eDiscovery search that covers the Teams locations, export the results, and collect the package within 14 days, because it expires after that. PST packages come in sizes of 1, 2, 5 (the default) or 10 GB, and an export that runs too long is cancelled after 7 days.

Can you retrieve old or deleted chats from Teams?

Messages a user deleted stay retrievable through the Export APIs for 21 days, and content of deleted teams, channels and users for 30 days. After those windows the Export APIs no longer return the items (checked 2026-11-09).

Does Microsoft train AI models on a company's Teams data?

Microsoft states that prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train its foundation large language models, checked November 9, 2026. The statement is Microsoft's, made for Microsoft 365 Copilot, and it does not cover what a company licenses to a third party.