Use the Finder to search iChat transcripts

Jan 18, '05 10:41:00AM

Contributed by: roncross@cox.net

I do a lot of chatting using iChat, and I save all of my iChat transcripts to disk by checking "Automatically save chat transcripts" in the Messages Preference of iChat. All of my iChat transcripts are located in ~/Documents/iChats, where ~ is your home directory. I was never really sure why I did this, but I am glad that I did and now I am more of a power user because of this. Someone recently asked me about some information that we discussed sometime ago, but I didn't remember the details. I did recall that I discussed this with her in a chat. I was able to find the specific information by searching my iChat transcripts by doing the following:

Go to the Finder, and do a search. Search in a specific place where all of your iChat transcripts are located. Remember that you have to check "Automatically save chat transcripts" as mentioned above. Search for items whose Extension is 'chat'; 'chat' is the extension of your iChat transcripts. Add Content as part of your search to include what you are searching for in the transcripts. Click Search, and you will get a list of transcripts that will contain the content of your search. Of course, you can narrow your search by adding additional queries such as Name, Date Modified, Size, etc.

Sure it's a simple technique and it might seem obvious, but sometimes the obvious isn't so clear to some people. So I think this hint will help some people utilize iChat a little more effectively.

[robg adds: If you have a ton of transcripts, and search them often, you might want to try out either Logorrhea (info, download) or ChatMaster (info, download). I've used both, and they both make it quite easy to search your transcripts.]

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