How to delete skype chat history stored on hotmail/live/outlook.com?
2013-11
Craig Stevensson
Please note, I'm not talking about the skype chat history on the skype software, which I can easly delete by going to Tools/Options/Privacy, etc...
I'm talking about that all of my chat conversations I do on skype using the normal skype software are also being saved on the cloud!
I'm using a microsoft account to login to skype since this is an old account I have with lots of contacts that I used to have since the Messenger, so I keep using that.
Yes, even I have no history on skype, if I logging into my account I can see all my previous chat history since the begining of the time, I've gone back a couple of months browsing and it seems everything is there, all my conversations with all my contacts are on the web, despite I explicitly told skype to not keep history (and it obeys, but just for the desktop).
I have searched and wasted hours on google trying to find and only could find a single thread with the same complain I have now. Most of the articles I found are garbage related to the normal procedure for deleting the history.
I also found articles where they say I supposedly have a "Message History" folder in my outlook account, which I don't have now, and I don't recall ever had that. Supposedly I could delete it from there, but I don't have it.
Oh, please note this too. While I have my privacy settings to not keep history at all, my current day chat history can be viewed on outlook/hotmail website. It is if I go to another sections, say, "Profile", while having the Chat opened that I realized all my conversations are there, stored for months. I don't want that and can't find a way to do it.
So, either this is a big glitch or something so obvious that I'm missing.
This is how to see your message history. Go to live.com/hotmail, and log with your microsoft account. Activate the chat pane by clicking the happy face smiley icon. Now click on your name and go to your profile. Keep the chat pane open. Click any contact and browse your chat history back. It seems it stores the full past month as I just did this and the history stops exactly on Sep, 3.
How to delete skype chat history stored on outlook.com?
hekevintran
I have Skype 2.8 on Mac OS X 10.5.8.
Under the the chat menu is an option called "Recent Chats". This allows me to see logs of recent chats, but not of older ones.
I know the older ones are stored because they are in ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/username/chatmsg256.dbb. This file when put in a text editor has text chat information from all my previous Skype chats. It is however stored in an unknown file format that I do not know how to parse.
Does Skype have a built-in log viewer (like Adium's) that I can use to access these older logs?
8088
I'm not sure if this shows the entire history, but try the following. Whether the contact is online or offline, pop up the chat window.
Then click "All" under "View earlier messages:".
Alternatively, click the gear icon for the contact and select "View Chat History". That generates an html file that is opened in your web browser window.
The reason I'm not sure if this shows all the history is because I can't fully remember when my chat history began on this computer.
Daniel Beck
Skype stores its chat history in a SQLite database: ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/YourSkypeName/main.db. You can use the command line sqlite3 tool to view the chat logs.
Find out user names of your chat partners
The following command in Terminal (I'm assuming you're using the bash shell) lists all your chat partners' user names:
sqlite3 /Users/danielbeck/Library/Application\ Support/Skype/YourSkypeName/main.db 'SELECT DISTINCT(dialog_partner) FROM Messages;'
Extract all messages to and from a specific chat partner
Option A. Write to terminal
To print all messages to and from a certain chat partner (theOtherPersonsUserName), use the following command:
sqlite3 /Users/danielbeck/Library/Application\ Support/Skype/YourSkypeName/main.db "SELECT author, from_dispname, datetime(timestamp, 'unixepoch') as date, body_xml FROM Messages where dialog_partner = 'theOtherPersonsUserName' ORDER BY timestamp;"
This will print one message per line, chronologically, with sending username, display name, date, and text, like the following:
danielbecks-username|Daniel Beck|2012-02-03 08:47:53|Just testing something
Option B. Write to file
You can write this chat log directly to a file. Run the following to write the log with theOtherPersonsUserName to the file theOtherPersonsUserName.log:
sqlite3 /Users/danielbeck/Library/Application\ Support/Skype/YourSkypeName/main.db "SELECT author, from_dispname, datetime(timestamp, 'unixepoch') as date, body_xml FROM Messages where dialog_partner = 'theOtherPersonsUserName' ORDER BY timestamp;" > "theOtherPersonsUserName.log"
Of course, you can also open main.db in any SQLite database viewer and go from there.
Jeff
I found a Mac tool that can help you: http://g-recorder.com/for-mac-users-en/ It exports chat history in Gmail, quite useful for later search and backup. Although there is Windows version as well.
8088
Try SkypeHistoryViewer.
A small program that will allow the user to open all history of Skype activity that is on a PC, check your kids usage, who there talking to what there saying or check on a cheating partner. Currently for Windows Vista and 7.