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January 17, 2007

tips

Manage your chat transcripts within iChat

Posted Jan. 17, ’07, 2:03 PM PT by Scott Silverman
Category | Tips

IchatlogviewerIf you’re like me, then you’re what I call a digital pack rat. I save pretty much every file that flashes across my screen—that amounts to approximately 20,000 emails, 15,000 photos, 8,000 songs, and 1,600 iChat transcripts. Speaking of iChat transcripts, there’s an easy way to manage those pesky, numerous, yet exceedingly useful little buggers straight within iChat by using the iChat extension app Chax, which we’ve covered before.

Many people don’t know about this Chax feature, but with iChat active simply choose the Window menu and then pick Log Viewer. You are now presented with a fairly simple interface you can use to search, browse, and read your iChat transcripts. Also check out the “Export As Text” option at the top, which makes iChats easy to be read and copied into other applications.

Also, rather creepily, check out the Activity window in iChat as well. That’s a log of everyone’s recent status messages, which might come in handy if you were a …err… stalker.


7 Comments

Lee said:

I believe that these are chax features...

If you turn on "label chax menu items", you will see that these are features actually enabled by chax itself. but still awesome nonetheless.

January 17, 2007 3:40 PM
Snaab said:

You may wish to verify this, but I believe the feature you're telling us about requires Chax to be installed.....

January 17, 2007 4:12 PM
Dan Frakes Author Profile Page said:

Scott:

Are you sure those features aren't provided by Chax? ;-) If I enable Chax's "Show badge next to Chax menu items" option, Log Viewer and Activity are labeled as Chax-added features...

That said, they're great features, and two more reasons to install Chax!

January 17, 2007 4:22 PM
Eddie Hargreaves said:

I'm using iChat 3.1.5 and there's no Log Viewer or Activity window available from any of the application's menus.

January 17, 2007 5:08 PM
Scott Silverman Author Profile Page said:

After reading these comments I went back into my iChat preferences and it turns out I do in fact have Chax installed! Removing and then reinstalling the preference pane confirmed the fact that both these features are indeed attributed to Chax. The post has been update to reflect this. Please accept my apologies for letting this slip!

January 17, 2007 6:54 PM
Kelmon said:

This is something that has bugged me about iChat from Day #1. Why on earth does it not offer a Chat History feature that allows me to search across past conversations or view the conversations that I have had in the past with others. Using Spotlight to access the chat logs is pathetic and I'm genuinely annoyed at Apple for not implementing such a basic feature into their IM product. Heck, even our Mickey Mouse IM product developed for my place of work (based on Jabber) provides an effective History function so why the heck doesn't iChat after 3 major releases? I need this sort of information far more than I need a fake backdrop to a video conference...

Sorry, rant over now.

January 18, 2007 12:10 AM
Snaab said:

One more addition: Yes, you need Chax to have this feature. Then, you need to go into iChat preferences and tell it to save all Chats. It will do so in a folder named "iChat" in your documents folder. You always were able to save chats, but this is an automatic way to keep them filed in a tidy manner. I haven't tried it, but I would guess that if you have previously saved chats (prior to installing Chax) and you place them in this ~\Documents\iChat folder, they might show up in the log window also.

January 18, 2007 10:15 AM

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