Skype officially shuts down: Here’s what will happen to your data

Skype

After more than two decades of operation, Skype has officially become history, as the video calling app was closed down by Microsoft on May 5. A group of engineers in Estonia's Tallinn in 2003 founded Skype, and it became a pioneer in internet-based telephone calls instead of landline calls. In 2011, the platform was eventually sold to Microsoft when the tech giant bought Skype for $8.5 billion.

However, with the rise of other popular video calling platforms such as Zoom and FaceTime, Microsoft eventually pulled the plug on Skype and terminated its operations. If you’re one of the few users who still operated Skype in 2025, you might be wondering what you can do going forward. With this closure, both free and paid Skype users, as well the Skype for Business users, will be migrated into Microsoft Teams, which offers similar features and more.

How to transition from Skype to Microsoft Teams

Existing Skype users simply log in to Teams with their existing Skype credentials, and their chats and contacts will be automatically transitioned to the platform. Moreover, if a user wants to use another video calling platform, they can opt to download their Skype data and migrate that data to that video calling service.

Microsoft has confirmed that Skype users will have until January 2026 to export or delete their existing data. However, if a user doesn’t take any action, then their Skype data will be deleted in January 2026, and eventually will not be available on Microsoft Teams.

How to download and export Skype data

·  Sign in to Skype and then head to the Export page using your Microsoft account.

·  Download your conversations, files, contacts, and other data.

·  After that, select the submit request and tap on Continue when prompted.

·  The process will take some minutes. After its completed, click on Download.