(no subject)

[heidi]

Someone must've done this: Is there any way to move YM from one computer to another while retaining one's message archive?

Yay! I did it! Thanks to all for their help!

Comments

[friede.livejournal.com]

Nope -- they're on your hard drive. For example, my conversations with Heidi are at:

C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\devartfriede\Archive\Messages\heiditandy

Each person I've ever spoken to and every conference I've been a part of is logged in

C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\devartfriede\Archive\

which breaks into \Messages\ (and further into individual IDs) and \Conferences\ (also broken down by ID).

Heidi, kazzik's right -- you can pull down the files and move them. The individual logs are .dat files which can be moved, copied, pasted, renamed -- though how to open them without Y!M I haven't a clue.

So, I experimented.

First, I copied some of the files and put them in an unrelated subdirectory to be safe, then renamed them (so that if there are overlapping days between the old computer's logs and the new, there won't be any overwriting).

Now, when I tested this, I found that if you move the posts into the individual folders after renaming them (the naming convention is YearMonthDay-username.dat) -- for example, renaming

20040614-devartfriede.dat
20040614b-devartfriede.dat

you can open Y!M and pull up the Message Archive and see the files.

If there are two June 14, 2004 entries, as there would be if I put 20040614b-devartfriede.dat into the devartfriede folder (yes I do talk to myself), then both would show up in the Message Archive, no problem.

Just a point -- if you rename the files 20040614-usernameb.dat, the username will change to usernameb when you go to the Message Archive and look at the chatlog. For example, it will look like:

usernameb: LOL

Hope this helps!

[kazzik.livejournal.com]

"Heidi, kazzik's right -- you can pull down the files and move them. The individual logs are .dat files which can be moved, copied, pasted, renamed -- though how to open them without Y!M I haven't a clue."

I like hearing I'm right ;)

And yahoo's encoding is a bitch - the short answer is that you can't open them without yahoo as they only load through the yahoo interface (when logged online - not fun for those of us still with die-l up).

The longer answer means downloading a program specifically designed to load yahoo archives - such as Yahoo Message Archive Decoder - which is the one I have, but the free version blocks out numbers - kinda harsh for the l33t teenies ;) - its interface is less than fun, so I tend to log on and go through yahoo if I need anything though.

Your experimenting is interesting - the only variable I've ever changed has been the date, thanks for posting here, it's something I may use in the future :)