Chat Transcript Viewer

Adium's storage of past messages consists of two components: full chat logs and most recent messages in the chat window, called message history.

How do I view my chat logs?

There are three methods to opening up the chat logs window:

1. Choose "Chat Transcript Viewer" in the Window menu.
2. Click the Clock icon in the chat window's toolbar.
3. Select a contact from the Contact list, then choose "View Chat Transcripts" in the Contact menu.

How do I disable chat logging?

• Open the Preferences pane from the Adium menu.
• Uncheck "Log messages" under the General tab.

How do I control message history (chat context)?

• Open the Preferences pane from the Adium menu.
• Type the number "Show Recent Messages" under the General tab.
• Of course, this depends upon chat transcripts, so if you disable message logging, no message history will be kept.

Where does Adium store my transcripts?

Your home folder → Library → Application Support → Adium 2.0 → Users → Default → Logs.

Recovering deleted transcripts from the trash

First: Don't panic! The Delete button just moves the transcripts to the Trash, so look there first. You may still have them.

Move them to your Logs folder:

1. Press ⇧⌘H. This opens your Home folder.
2. Navigate to Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/Logs.
3. The contents of that folder are subfolders, one per account; the contents of each subfolder are more subfolders, one per contact. So, for example, if your AIM username is jdoe and you have a contact named jsmith, the logs folder will contain a folder named "AIM.jdoe" that contains a subfolder named "jsmith".
4. Move each chat-log file from the Trash to the appropriate subfolder of the Logs folder. (It is important that you put it in the right folder. Otherwise, Adium won't be able to find those transcripts correctly in the Transcript Viewer window.)

If you don't still have the transcripts in your trash

This procedure requires that you be running Mac OS X Leopard, and that you have Time Machine enabled and at least one backup from before the deletion.

• Press ⇧⌘H. This opens your Home folder.
• Navigate to Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/Logs.
• Launch Time Machine. By default, it's in your Dock. If you removed it from your Dock, you can still access it using Spotlight (at the far right end of the menu bar).
• Go back in time and recover the missing files.

Reindexing transcripts (i.e. when search is broken)

When Adium is no longer showing up all results when searching your chat transcripts, you can manually reindex them with File → Import → Reindex Adium Logs.