A little video I made with some instructions on how to get facebook chat history, even if your friends are offline.
It’s always really annoying when you remember that a friend sent you a cool link but they’re not online any more. With this facebook tweak you can bring up the chat history.
Important: To get your facebook chat history back, you need to be logged in and online on the chat box. If you’re offline it won’t work.
Facebook only stores chat history for a few days though, so there might be no history to retrieve.
This is an extension of my facebook hacks page.
PS: Sorry the text is so small on the vid, put it fullscreen and you can read it better :0)
#1 by vicky on August 26, 2009 - 6:12 am
Thank you so much ! it works
#2 by Offliner on September 27, 2009 - 8:31 am
It works , but
how we do that for offline friend , but she doesn’t friend with me anymore on facebook ???
for example last night I chat with A , then suddenly she dropped my friend status with her ,
how do i see our last history chat with her ?
because I am no her friend anymore
#3 by user24 on September 30, 2009 - 8:18 am
interesting question. if you can find her user id then it may still be possible.
If you right click and copy the link location on their name, you might end up with a URL like this:
from which you can extract the ID…
#4 by himanshu on January 19, 2010 - 10:15 pm
yup, it works superfine……..
gud job dude….. keep it up.
#5 by Peter Craft on September 10, 2009 - 6:29 am
Couldn’t retrieve chat history in either IE or Firefox….just opens the chat window and says that the perosn was offline…the convo was just the night before!
#6 by Kath on October 17, 2009 - 12:03 pm
I
I’ve had this problem too, Can’t get it to work on either firefox or IE – Any reason why it wouldn’t work?
#7 by on October 19, 2009 - 6:12 am
Its not working in my case… i m nt getting the nine digit ID on first place after hitting “copy shortcut” it comes in this format “.php?can_poke=100000042293126&pokeback=0&failed_captcha=0″
whr is da id here??? i forgot to copy my frndz no, on chat and nw its gone … :(
#8 by t on October 19, 2009 - 1:59 pm
can u retrieve chat histories that you’ve cleared?
#9 by Lozz on October 28, 2009 - 7:26 am
Hey, i tried the chat history one n it didn’t work iv watched the video n everythin :S x
#10 by Lozz on October 28, 2009 - 7:31 am
oh ok the chat box is poppinh up but the history isn’t :S
#11 by monna on December 10, 2009 - 11:57 pm
I am havin the same trouble, its sayin that the person is offline and no chat history
#12 by halleluja on November 10, 2009 - 5:49 am
it seems to work only when the users is using the old system with the ID number in the URL. With the new option to create a vanity URL its not working. How to extract the ID from that?
#13 by halleluja on November 10, 2009 - 6:13 am
poke User and save Link Location gives me only this:
#14 by halleluja on November 10, 2009 - 6:30 am
damn…by mistake I copied the “&” after the ID…now it seems to work…thx…great help…
BTW…any idea how long the chats are available with that procedure? How long does it take FB to erase them? A few hours? A few days?
#15 by diverlady on November 20, 2009 - 5:12 am
The above link is great! Thanks a million. Is there anyway that you can do while you are showing offline yourself. I tried it but it wont retrive the history until you show online??
#16 by diverlady on November 23, 2009 - 4:51 pm
and any rough estimate how long it takes for fb to erase history??
#17 by faeng on December 10, 2009 - 7:05 pm
i guess this is already fixed by facebook programmers. hope we can still get a different work around
#18 by user24 on December 12, 2009 - 5:09 am
no, it still works. Try it again.
#19 by User25 on December 14, 2009 - 5:48 pm
Thank you so much… this works perfectly! You’re a GENIUS!!
#20 by partner on December 17, 2009 - 8:45 pm
i have been using this hack for a while now and its been awesome! but since the maintenance occurred last night its no longer working. any ideas?
#21 by Martin on December 23, 2009 - 9:10 am
Hello i have tried your history chat does not seem to work could it have been changed since the maintenance or something i use internet explorer any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
#22 by pete on January 5, 2010 - 4:33 am
new facebook privacy features seem to have disabled.
#23 by Sheila on January 15, 2010 - 2:16 pm
Brilliant – thanks!!!
#24 by beatrice on January 19, 2010 - 4:03 pm
it’s possible to get a facebook chat history of a friend? i mean, i wanna read what my friend wrote to another friend. i heard that someone did that, and he said we knew “programming computer” or something like that, but i dont know how he did that. thank you
#25 by ahm on January 19, 2010 - 11:23 pm
is it possible to retrieve chat history even you’ve deleted his/her as a friend?
#26 by cuneyt on February 7, 2010 - 10:59 pm
hi all. I am using firefox . this chat trick doesn’t work for 3 weeks. It still opens the chat tab you used, even though it is closed, but can not retrieve the history. maybe it can retrieve if you have closed the chat window 10 min. ago. (practically it is useless too) do you have a new trick which works? thanks..
#27 by Amanda on February 17, 2010 - 2:28 pm
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….?
#28 by me on February 17, 2010 - 4:31 pm
you are the best!
#29 by lou on February 17, 2010 - 11:45 pm
MY bf tryed it we couldnt get it to work
#30 by lou on February 17, 2010 - 11:46 pm
I couldn’t get the chat history to pull up on facebook
#31 by mandy on March 4, 2010 - 9:30 pm
I did this today using Safari on my Mac and it worked perfectly. Very helpful having it on video so I could copy exactly what you did. Thank you.
#32 by Felicia on March 6, 2010 - 9:10 pm
This brings up the chat, but not the full chat history which is needed in my case. Do you know a way to get the full chat history?
#33 by Louisa on March 19, 2010 - 12:58 pm
Hi, I tried this both in Firefox and Safari. A box popped up saying the person was offline, but no chat history. Any suggestions?
#34 by c on March 25, 2010 - 3:22 am
wow, thats amazing, it really works. thanks !
just wondering though.. is there any way to get back to older history ?
like, i had a 3 hour convo with my friend today, but it will only show me the most recent hour, is there any way to get the other 2 hours back ?
#35 by kieran killingworth on April 1, 2010 - 12:11 pm
i need help
#36 by kayleiigh on April 6, 2010 - 10:49 am
it dont even worrk!!!!!!!!!!!
#37 by Howard Yeend on April 6, 2010 - 3:19 pm
Yes it does.
#38 by gmgirl on April 6, 2010 - 9:14 pm
how do u do it?
#39 by krish on April 11, 2010 - 9:55 pm
how did you do it people? i’ve tried it in google chrome, firefox and ie but it doesn’t work? it just says the person id offline but no chat history
#40 by Howard Yeend on April 12, 2010 - 12:12 am
You’re doing it right, there’s just no history to get; fb have cleared it already.
#41 by kira on April 17, 2010 - 8:43 am
not working..
is there any other better trick that i can use??
it’s only says the user is offline..lols
#42 by Howard Yeend on April 18, 2010 - 2:27 am
yeah, that’s working, it’s just that FB have already cleared the history.
#43 by Fran on April 25, 2010 - 6:13 am
javascript:buddylist.itemOnClick(000000000);
I’m putting it in just like that, am I doing something wrong because I’m not getting anything?
#44 by Fran on April 25, 2010 - 6:16 am
Actually, this is what I am getting although I talked with this person less than 4 hours ago…
No results found for javascript:buddylist.itemOnClick(000000000);.
Check your spelling or try another term.
(I used the actual numbers, I just put zero’s here for privacy sake)
#45 by Buddy on May 4, 2010 - 2:34 pm
Try a capital “L” in buddyList
#46 by jep on May 7, 2010 - 5:50 am
I tried this it showed some of the history but not all.. Now all i keep getting is the person showing that they are online for a few seconds and then going offline.. I know that they are not online so why is it doing this? and how can i stop it?
#47 by Ryan on May 20, 2010 - 12:32 pm
It works superfine! I hope you can create something like this that can pull up everything in the history!
#48 by Rachel on June 1, 2010 - 2:01 pm
it worked but sadly all that came up was “so-and-so is offline” … so how do i get the WHOLE conversation?
#49 by nate on July 6, 2010 - 9:11 pm
Got it to work
javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(000000000);
Using safari on Mac. Dont forget the capital L thats what got me
#50 by pitia on July 26, 2010 - 7:17 am
This trick is SUPERB…! it works..just follow each step and make sure your type the correct address link: javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(000000000);
…keep up the good work buddy..:D
#51 by Lauren on August 1, 2010 - 12:33 am
did not work for safari or firefox on mac so sad :(
#52 by PA on August 8, 2010 - 7:39 am
Worked fine for me – Safari 5 on 10.6.4
#53 by JMAO on August 4, 2010 - 8:54 pm
it worked for me fine. used firefox. thank you very much
#54 by Halka on August 25, 2010 - 1:14 am
Amazing trick friend….. it works!! Just wanted to know which screen recording application did you use to get such a nice video? If possible, please let me know at “halka kutta 01 -at- gmail. com” (remove the spaces and use @ in the place of -at-)
Thanks,
Halka
#55 by Howard Yeend on August 29, 2010 - 6:10 am
I used camstudio. It’s a nice free app.
#56 by on September 9, 2010 - 1:40 am
It worked and I can talk to my self but he never answer xD