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How to log and pull up your Facebook chat history

Submitted by michael morisy on Fri, 2009-06-19 01:43

Update: The comments have an alternative method that works without installing anything and is retroactive. Unfortunately, that doesn't pull all Facebook chats, just the most recent ones

Finally, users can record and find Facebook chat history, but it requires a bit of a workaround including a Firefox plugin and a Facebook app. Not the most elegant solution, but for those who are just can't seem to keep track of what they're Facebook chatting about, it'll have to do.

First, head over to the Facebook Chat History Manager homepage and install the plugin. It'll prompt you over to the Facebook app after successful installation, where you'll have to register the app and then create a local user account (all the chat history is stored on your own computer, not someone else's servers).

One interesting thing to note: Unlike in GMail's GChat, the chat logging application doesn't notify the person on the other end that your conversation is being logged:

The logs are also not particularly well formatted nor particularly intuitive to access. At any point in Firefox, you can just hit CTRL-ALT-F and the logs will come up, but there's no easy way to click through to the logs inside Facebook itself, short of going to the application's own URL. There's also no way to search for chats, so you're stuck either wading through them by date and name, and the output isn't exactly well styled:

Facebook Chat

The good news is that these quibbles can probably be fixed with relatively minor updates, and the solutions gets bonus points for offline chat history access. In any case, it's the best that can be done until Facebook unveils a chat history lookup of their own. If today's announcement of improved Facebook inbox searching is any indication, that could be the near future.

Further Reading:

25 comments

 
Anonymous wrote 16 weeks 6 days ago

crap

this is crap, why not just make a hack to pull up history of a user who is offline by pulling their user ID and placing it in the browser as if they were online. Then! you could read the history of even offline peeps. I noticed if I close the browser out with a chat open and log in later when the person is offline, the history is open of that person still so ya know it's possible.

 
michael morisy wrote 16 weeks 4 days ago

Elegance

That would definitely be a more elegant solution but, as far as I know, nobody's implemented that. As I don't really use Facebook chat, it wouldn't do me a whole lot of good, hence why I'm "not just making" that particular hack. If you find it, let me know and I'll update this guide.

 
Anonymous wrote 15 weeks 6 days ago

reply to "crap"

this can be done with a simple line of javascript:

javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(USER_ID);

just paste that into your address bar

however this only shows recent chat history. i assume facebook's chat servers erase history after a certain period of time, or it only holds a set amount of history per person.

 
michael morisy wrote 15 weeks 6 days ago

Thanks

Thanks for commenting. I couldn't get that to work, either as-is or by replacing User_ID with the user's ID.

If anyone else has luck, I'd be curious as to how they got it to work.

 
Anonymous wrote 15 weeks 6 days ago

re: reply to "crap"

op here. what browser did you use? do you have javascript disabled? did you get the user id right? and lastly did you completely erase the url in the address bar before you pasted the code?

i just tried it in safari and firefox and it worked in both.

 
michael morisy wrote 15 weeks 3 days ago

Using Firefox with javascript

Using Firefox with javascript enabled. Might be using the wrong user ID, I'll play around with it some more. Thanks for sharing!

 
sasw3w wrote 14 weeks 3 days ago

This works

javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(USER_ID);

This definitely works in IE 8 and FF. You just have to make sure to use the correct user ID. If the person has not set-up a name as part of their address, you will have to cut and paste the number into the USER_ID part of the code.

 
jurix wrote 14 weeks 3 days ago

more ID numbers

Could you help: is it possible to open multiple chatwindows with the javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(…) comand. I mean it is possible to see the chat history of two, or more friends (two or more ID numbers)? Because it would be very useful to have one command to display the chat history of a group of friends…
Thanks for the answer

 
Anonymous wrote 13 weeks 5 days ago

well..

Is it possible to pull up previous chats without doing this to log it with the application, first?

 
michael morisy wrote 13 weeks 5 days ago

I'm not sure I understand

I'm not sure I understand your question, but this alternative method doesn't require the extra application. It does require you log in first.

 
Anonymous wrote 13 weeks 1 day ago

do u have to be logged in to

do u have to be logged in to the account?

some clearer instructions here would be helpful as I tried it on both facebook and chrome and it didnt work

 
michael morisy wrote 13 weeks 1 day ago

Yes

You must be logged into facebook, and you must replace the appropriate part with the User ID of the chat you'd like to look up.

 
Anonymous wrote 13 weeks 1 hour ago

Not working for me

I just downloaded it, and I can't get it to work. I've tried uninstall/reinstall, using my facebook account name in the Facebook ID (*) blank, tried another time with my facebook id number there, but I still can't get it to even pull up my friends list. What am I doing wrong?

 
Anonymous wrote 10 weeks 1 day ago

hi i need to find a chat

hi i need to find a chat log
can you explain exactly what to do

 
michael morisy wrote 10 weeks 22 hours ago

That's what the above is all

That's what the above is all about. Just read through the explanations. If you're looking for an old chat, you're probably out of luck.

 
Anonymous wrote 10 weeks 19 hours ago

Facebook chat

Hi - is there a way to log Facebook chats on a computer and read them/pull them up on a different computer if we know the person's ID and password??? thanks!

 
not so anon wrote 8 weeks 2 days ago

thanks :)

thanks for the info

javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(USER_ID);

works perfectly, tho yes it is rather limited to the most recent logs.. but still very useful if your buddy sends you a phone number and you forget to copy it before closing the chat and browser then go to call them lmao (happens alot with me lol)

 
michael morisy wrote 8 weeks 2 days ago

Glad it worked!

Glad it worked!

 
Anonymous wrote 5 weeks 1 hour ago

ID (*)

Hi I don't exactly understand what the ID (*) is . Do you have to put the email address of the person that you want to record the chats of. OR put like a name in for example MUM and then a password????

Please explain as I am confused and want to be able to do this.

Also by doing this will it record all people using facebook in the household under this one ID that I have created??

BY just pulling up the VIEW REPORTS or do I have to put the email address for the other facebook account of the person I want to record. So do I create another account using say, for example MUM2 and then a password?

Cheers

 
Lost wrote 4 weeks 4 days ago

Error on page

When I try the javascript line, I get an 'Error on page' response. Javascript is enabled, turned my firewall off,.... Any ideas??

 
Anonymous wrote 3 weeks 12 hours ago

facebook chat history retrieval

I followed the exact steps for retrieving facebook chat history as directed. first I tried on safari and on firefox from my macbook with javascript enabled. Are there settings on my facebook account I need to change as well or has facebook disabled this ability?
My second questions is do I need to be “online” to chat in order to perform history retrieval?
When I do as you say to do, when the person is online, the chat window pops up but no history and when they are offline the chat window pops up saying “john doe is offline” without history too.
OR is there an alternate way to retrieve the history even if you "chat" on other computers but still want to secretly log the histories without anyone knowing....?

 
Anonymous wrote 2 weeks 1 day ago

record chat on seperate computer.

If I chat on a machine at school, will I be able to retreive my chat history (using the before mentioned method with firefos and the application) on my computer at home? They are not the same network.

 
michael morisy wrote 2 weeks 1 day ago

No.

No, because that data is stored locally, and if you try, you potentially let other's read your chats (!!!). The other method, using javascript trickery, should give you a limited look into your chat history however, no matter where you log on from.

 
Anonymous wrote 1 week 1 day ago

Javascript and cleared chat

Can someone using javascript still pull up chat history even if you cleared the history in the chat?

 
Anonymous wrote 3 days 20 hours ago

when i enter the information,

when i enter the information, the chat opens, but it only says the user is offline. is there a way to retrieve chat history when users are offline?

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