How can I export my Google chat logs?

Question

In the spirit of taking responsibility for my own data, I regularly fetch my gmail emails via IMAP for backup.

However, this doesn't include the Google Talk chat logs which are also available in Gmail. Is there a way to export those logs? The data liberation front doesn't seem to have any information about google talk.

Answer 1

The IMAP interface to gmail now provides access to chat messages. If you had already set up gmail IMAP, then you only have to enable the IMAP visibility for the "Chat" label in the gmail settings.

Answer 2

Forward them to an email address you have POP/IMAP access to.

Answer 3

There is no explicit way of exporting your Google Chat logs through a Google provided function but there are a number of different alternative methods which seem to be available.

1. The first, as mentioned by Simon, is to forward them to an email address where you can download them via POP/IMAP.

2. You can install the "Create a Document" labs experiment for Google Mail which allows you to create a document for each chat. This could be quite laborious though and then you have to backup from Google Docs, which is another step.

3. There appears to be a python script here which backups Google Chat logs. However, in the comments there appears to be some issues with being temporarily locked out if you download too much at once.

Answer 4

Have a look "How to do that", without use of any software http://digivorous.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-download-and-backup-your.html

Answer 5

You could make a filter in GMail to do the heavy lifting for you. When making a new filter, put "in:chats" in the "Has the words:" blank, and then choose the action you want to take (such as forwarding).

By the way, it's useful to note that the "Has the words:" blank functions just like the search bar above (as far as I can tell), so you can enter all kinds of search operators in there to make really complex filters!

Answer 6

none of the forwarding labelling filtering solutions work...

"no old mail will be forwarded"

• it appears that option 3 is the only solution that may work - but even that has the risk of being locked out for 24 hours - or whatever.

AMAZING! - Why is it that we cannot access the chat logs? is there some legal issue? I have searched for this on many occasion and always give up.

There isn't a clear answer that I can find anywhere and all the supposed answers come up short... and last time I tried, I could not get the Python script to work - but then I was on x64, and not very familiar with Python in the first place. I am about to try again - crossing my fingers.

Answer 7

I have figured out a way to get them out via forwarding them, using a browser scripting tool call iMacros. I think this macro will only work with Firefox 3.6 which you can get from this link. I wont go into installing and setting either of them up, but here is the macro I used.

VERSION BUILD=7300701 RECORDER=FX
TAB T=1
FRAME F=4
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=CLASS:hE&&TXT:Reply
WAIT SECONDS=.5
TAG POS=1 TYPE=TEXTAREA FORM=NAME:NoFormName ATTR=NAME:to CONTENT=test@GMAIL.COM
TAG POS=1 TYPE=DIV ATTR=TABINDEX:1&&ROLE:button&&TXT:Send
WAIT SECONDS=3
TAG POS=1 TYPE=IMG ATTR=ALT:&&SRC:images/cleardot.gif&&CLASS:iHkD0e&&TXT:
WAIT SECONDS=2

Just replace 'test@gmail.com' with the email address you want to forward to.

Now the only other key piece of advice is where to start the loop of the macro. To do it right, you will want to create a label and assign all your gmail chats to it. This will allow you to see your chats in chronological order and forward them that way.

Then in gmail click on the label, when the list opens it will likely open to the newest first. Therefore, go the the last page of the labels contents. Open the last item. here is when you click "play loop" in iMacros.

I had 1k chats to export. You'll notice there are "wait" statements in the code, this will give the browser time to keep up. They may need tweaking.

Also, check back every couple of minutes, because it sometimes throws an error, or tries to move to the next (newer) chat before the email has been sent. Just click "cancel" and it will go back to the script and the email will have been sent.

If it throws any other errors during operation, you should be able to adjust the loop duration and start it again with no problems.

This has been aggravating me for so long since I switched Gmail accounts due to spam, so I am finally happy to close that account having got all my content out.