How do you produce modern files like Slack, Teams chats, and dynamic spreadsheets that don't fit native or image formats?

Modern collaboration tools and dynamic files resist the traditional “native or image” choice because they are not really discrete documents. A Slack or Teams channel is a continuous, threaded, ever-changing stream; a spreadsheet may contain formulas, hidden tabs, pivot tables, and external links that a static picture cannot capture. Producing these requires deciding what the meaningful unit of information is and how to present it faithfully.

Why Native and Image Fall Short

A static image (such as a TIFF or PDF) of a chat thread freezes a conversation that has no natural page boundaries and strips out reactions, edits, threading, and timestamps. A flat image of a spreadsheet hides the formulas and data behind displayed values. True “native” files, meanwhile, may be unwieldy, hard to redact, or impossible to export cleanly from a cloud platform.

Common Production Approaches

• Structured or “modern attachment” exports. Many platforms export chats as structured data (for example, message-level records with author, timestamp, channel, and edit history) that can be reviewed and produced in a load-file or delimited format.
• Near-native review with reasonable units. Conversations are often grouped into defensible segments, such as a day’s messages per channel or a single thread, so each “document” is coherent and citable.
• Native production for dynamic files. Spreadsheets are frequently produced in their native form (or a faithful equivalent) so formulas and underlying values remain intact, with metadata preserved.

Governing Principles

Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a requesting party may specify a form of production; absent that, electronically stored information is generally produced in the form in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form. The overarching goals are usability, completeness, and preservation of relevant metadata. Rules and practice differ across state courts and other countries, so confirm the controlling standard for your matter.

The practical path is to address format early: meet and confer, agree on a production protocol that defines units, fields, and metadata for each data type, and document the choices. For a broader overview, see e-discovery.

Specialized data calls for deliberate, negotiated formats rather than forcing every file into native or image output.