In 2011, Microsoft acquired skype for $8.5 billion, with the aim of making it a core part of its communication strategy. However, once a symbol for global video calls, skype is gradually losing its position as the market witnessed the strong rise of a series of competitors such as: WhatsApp, Zoom, Google Meet or Discord...
After more than two decades of revolutionizing the way people connect globally, skype officially closed on Monday (May 5, 2025).
The shutdown will affect both free and paid skype users, but sky for Business will continue to operate temporarily.
chats skype automatically switch to Teams
After skype is stop working, users just need to log in to Teams with their existing skype login information and their conversations and accounts will be automatically available.
If users do not want to use Teams, they can choose to download skype data and switch to another video calling service. Users will have until January 2026 to export or delete their skype data.
If users log in to Microsoft Teams Free before that time, their call and chat history on skype will still be available. If no action is taken, skype data will be deleted in January 2026.
skype data extraction instructions
When skype is down, users can save the conversation by:
Step 1: Go to the skype file output and chat history page.
Step 2: Log in to your Microsoft account linked to your skype.
Step 3: Select your data. You can choose both a conversation and a file.
Step 4: click on Submit a request.
skype will gather data and compress it into a Zip file to download, which could take a few minutes. The data remains available through January 2026.
