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I just realised that I didn't back up my skype app data folder when formatting my PC. There is a certain person's chat history I am fond of which I have lost now. I know there are ways to inspect chat logs via database viewers (example: Is there a way to access Skype IM logs?) but that is not what I am after.

Is it possible for the person in question to share our chat history with me, in a way that I can insert it into my skype app data folder, so that I can restore our history in skype?

Any help appreciated.

Edit: with my limited database knowledge, I was pondering something like this: sort the other person's main.db file (messages) by contacts, filter out my name, extract them and somehow insert those records into my own main.db file. But then of course the records would be reversed.

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Dreica
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1 Answers1

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The Skype DB file location depends on the OS and Skype version you use but you can always search for a part of the message that you know must be inside the DB file.

For example, I have Windows 10 and I knew that in DB there must be a string "all that we can use one fresh droplet" so I used TotalCommander ALT+F7 (below tick 'find text' and enter the string). But you can also use in Windows fileseek.ca or any other tool. In Linux grep -rnw '/' -e 'your string here' (and other OSs Google).

From here we get a lot of useful information like older Skype versions default location was: C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Skype\yourname and my latest Skype version's DB file is here: C:\Users\MYNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.SkypeApp_kzf8qxf38zg5c\LocalState\s4l-myusername.db

Then get SQLite browser - for example sqlitebrowser.org and open that file. In older Skype you'll need to browse table "Messages" and in newer Skype table "messagesv12". You can just export the chats you need and import it to another DB file. Most of the useful data you need probably is in the second column 'nsp_data' in JSON format. You can type at the top of that column's filter area, for example, the Skype username you want the chat history. With this tool, you can export and also import to another DB file.

I personally prefer to get all the data to MySQL so that I have separate columns for date/time, author of the message, conversation partner and message content. In this answer, I got PHP code for newer Skype chat history but as I have also some older Skype db formats I wrote also a code to get data from there:

$db = new SQLite3('db/main.db');
$results = $db->query('SELECT id, chatname, author, from_dispname, timestamp, body_xml FROM Messages');
while ($row = $results->fetchArray()) {
    if (strpos($row[5], $row[1]) !== false) $empty = 1; //In Skype there's many body XML's that just contain chat name. Maybe just adding contact or call?
    else {
        $empty = 0;
        $datetime = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $row[4]); //I need date/time instead timestamp
        echo 'ID: ' . $row[0] . ', Chatname: ' . $row[1] . ', Author: ' . $row[2] . ', From displayname: ' . $row[3] . ', Date/time: ' . $datetime . ', Message: ' . $row[5] . '<br>---------<br>';

        //var_dump($row);
    }
}
Martin Sults
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