How do I jump to a specific date in history or the oldest message in a Slack channel in the desktop app?

Question

My specific question is how to do this in the Slack desktop app, but I wouldn't mind settling for a way to do this via a web browser, and then worst case, a web api.

I often want to jump to the beginning of a channel and just read, but it takes FOREVER to scroll up. What's the shortcut? I was hoping for something like /InTheBeginning, jk too long. How about /begin /oldest or something like that or a keyboard shortcut like ctrl+shift+home or something like that? I don't care what it is, I just want it. How about "/jump oldest" "/jump latest" and "/jump 11/29/2015", because maybe I want to see what was said on my B'day?

This is starting to sound like a feature request, but hopefully the functionality already exists and I'm just missing it.

Update1

I'm using the latest version of Slack v1.2.7 64-bit on Windows 7 Ent Sp 1.
I now see that the Home button does retrieve "some" history, but only if you select a message first. I was previously pressing Home when my cursor was in the "+" input message text box and nothing happens in that case. However, I still can't get it to go all the way to the beginning with a single key stroke. Also, I saw a vague setting in preferences' "Advanced Options" -> Page up, Page down, Home, and End keys always scroll messages, but I can't see a difference between when it is checked or not.

Update2: "archives" path

I found a faster way for the browser, but not the desktop app.

https://{team_name}.slack.com/archives/{channel_name}  

The above "archives" path shows a page that has a date picker "BROWSE BY DATE". Click on "Pick a date" and you can quickly scroll back to the beginning of time.

Maybe there is an even faster way to get to a specific date or the beginning of a channel using only the URI. Also, if anyone can find docs on this "archives" path please add in a comment. I don't remember how I stumbled across this.

Update3: Hack for linking directly to beginning of channel

It looks like the DatePicker passes the epoch time in seconds, so I discovered if I pass s0000000000000000 it goes to the beginning of the channel. It works if you shorten to s00, but not s0 for some reason. Voila!

https://{team_name}.slack.com/archives/{channel_name}/s00

Answer 1

Slack..version 2.0.0 has jump to date feature. on selecting a particular date, the control goes to that particular date and then we can scroll

Click the settings on the channel, and then "Jump to date ..."

Answer 2

In the desktop app, to jump to the oldest message one can open View Channel Details tab by clicking the (i) button, then clicking Created by ... text will take one to the first message in the channel

Answer 3

in:cs-498-data-vis after:2020-05-17 before:2020-06-30

You can enter that after clicking the magnifying glass icon.

Breakdown of syntax:

in:

The channel you want to search

after:

After the date in yyyy-mm-dd format

before:

Before the date in yyyy-mm-dd format.

Answer 4

Click on the date that appears before any messages belonging to that day, and then click "The very beginning" under the "Jump to..." sub-menu. You can also click "Jump to a specific date".