Exporting Skype Chat

Did you know we can export our Skype chat? I was trying to find someone who I had talked to on their partner's Skype a while ago, and I couldn't remember the partner's name.

"No problem," I thought, "I will find their name in my Skype log. "

But our Skype log is now only 30 days old - and it is stored in the cloud, not on our devices!

"Arggggh!!"

But all is not lost. We can export all the text generated from within Skype programme instead. All we have to is do to export our history (ie, older than thirty days). So in Skype, we go to Tools | Options | Privacy | click the Export Chat History button. Then we choose our save file location, and click Save. Our file will download and save as a CSV file.

Then we just open the CSV file, and save it as Excel. While the data is a bit messy (ie, the dates are just a number, and I have not yet found the right category/code to apply over the cells to have them show up correctly), but we can apply an autofilter, then search/filter for the information we need.

Easy.


Sam

• Reference: Skype (n.d.). Chat Export: How do I manage my conversation history in Skype for Windows desktop? | How do I export my chat history to CSV? Retrieved 19 January 2018 from https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA392/how-do-i-manage-my-conversation-history-in-skype-for-windows-desktop?q=chat+export&intsrc=client-_-windows-_-7.40-_-go-help.export&setlang=en