Read skype message archive

Question

I would like to read my skype message archive outside of the Skype app. And be able to export it in some sort (other than copy-paste it from my messages) as far i can figure

Answer 1

C'mon now, this is Stackoverflow, let's get technical, shall we? Let's put away childish jpegs, gui tools, and spreadsheet psuedocode and get to the heart of the problem!

[fist bump]

Source: https://coolaj86.com/articles/searching-skypes-sqlite-database/

Find your Skype DB

First you've got to find the correct skype db for your user:

ls ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype/

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Skype/<>/main.db

Learn them Tables Good!

You'll want to take a look at the available tables, and their descriptions:

.tables          " see the short table list
.schema Contacts " all about the Contacts table
.schema Messages " all about the Messages table

You'll probably need to use the good ol' ctrl+f to search in the output for things like time, author, and username.

Dive into the SQLs

Then you gotsta dive into the SQLs...

" List the 25 most recently contacted contacts
SELECT skypename, lastused_timestamp FROM Contacts ORDER BY lastused_timestamp DESC LIMIT 25;

" List the 100 most recent messages
SELECT id, convo_id, timestamp, type, author, body_xml FROM Messages ORDER BY timestamp DESC LIMIT 100;

" List the 100 most recent conversations (and all participants)
SELECT last_activity_timestamp, identity, type, given_displayname, displayname FROM Conversations ORDER BY last_activity_timestamp DESC LIMIT 100;

" Search for a message with the text 'home'
SELECT author, body_xml FROM Messages WHERE body_xml LIKE '%HOME%' ORDER BY timestamp ASC;

" Search for a contact named 'john'
SELECT (displayname || ' : ' || skypename || ' : ' || fullname) as names FROM Contacts WHERE names LIKE '%JOHN%' ORDER BY lastused_timestamp ASC;

(note comments are with a ", not a #)

Note that

• Messages refers to a line of text such as "What's up?"
• Conversations refers to a collection of Messages between 2 or more parties.
• I think Chats refers to the logical time gaps separated with labels like 'yesterday', '7 days ago', 'March 24th', etc