10

I ran a meeting on Google Hangout, and we took notes on chat. We all accidentally forgot to copy the chat text before all leaving.

Can I somehow retrieve a transcript of the chat during the hangout?

Improve this question
1

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
5

A workaround is to:

  1. Load the whole history by scrolling up
  2. Open Firebug and copy whole HTML to clipboard

  3. Paste it in a text editor and add on the very first line

    `<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">`

  4. Replace the contents of <head> with

    <meta content="IE=Edge" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible">
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<style type="text/css">
.tH, .bI, .lZ {
  display: none;
}

div.Sn {
  float: right;
  clear: both;
  background-color: #80D4DF;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  padding: 10px;
  -moz-border-radius: 15px;
  border-radius: 15px;

}

div.pj {
  float: left;
  clear: both;
  background-color: #FEC56B;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  padding: 10px;
  -moz-border-radius: 15px;
  border-radius: 15px;

}

body {
  width: 50%;
}
</style>

  5. Remove any <script> tags form document

Improve this answer
4

Adding to the answer, you could download your hangout chats via https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/downloads

Won't change the gist of the answer, but will save you a lot of time scrolling.

I also use tags and regex to get the lines I want.

Improve this answer
1
  • Takeout presently provides Hangouts as a JSON file. Providing your parser code would make this answer helpful.
    – feetwet
    Feb 5, 2020 at 1:17
4

https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/downloads that is the link to get all the information you may need,from all the google products that you are currently using.

Improve this answer
0
3

There is a difference between the chat history that happens outside of the hangout window (which is what you get via the downloads from Google Takeout) and the conversation that takes place inside the video hangout.

The way google calls simple text messages chats "Hangouts" and the group videos as "Hangouts" confuses most people

I have a lot of meetings where we take notes there and the only way is copy/past or print to PDF to get that transcript??

If you do need a way to extract conversations from the outer chat, I did find this nifty parser that can extract conversations from the outer chats in text, CSV, and HTML format http://blog.jay2k1.com/2014/11/10/how-to-export-and-backup-your-google-hangouts-chat-history/

Improve this answer
1

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.