Skype saves your conversation data in a SQLite3 database (main.db). If you close your Skype conversations, they still persist in the database even if the Skype application doesn't acknowledge it.

Deleted conversations might exist in the database, but that's beyond the scope of this module.

After my initial search to see what data recovery options were available, I stumbled across a common problem.

Apparently Skype logs are a life or death situation.

I can,t understand this post, but I'll get you that main.db

Scroll down and I'll tell you how to found main.db!!

It's okay, he's new.

I wanted to recover my chat logs. The first resource with relevant technical information on Google came from this post http://betrayedspousesclub.blogspot.com/2...

Thankfully, the infidelity of the blogger's spouse produced nice reference material, but also a sinking feeling that I'm looking through the screen at my future and at exactly how I'd react to their situation.

As a solution, I wrote save_skype, a script that takes your main.db file and outputs chats to flat text files. You'll need Python 3 and click from PyPI.

Pull the save_skype project from GitHub and follow the guide in the README.md. Supply the correct arguments to the script and you'll get a series of text files with the format:

not_me_121: hey 

this_is_me: oh hey 

not_me_121: are you still doing that thing where you waste your life in front of a screen?? 

this_is_me: yes

You need to supply the location of your main.db file. In Linux, you can find this at ~/Skype/SKYPE_USERNAME/main.db. In Windows, it is located at %APPDATA%\Skype\SKYPE_USERNAME\main.db

To extract and save your old chats, you'll need to do this or something like it:

alex@mba:/media/alex/Downloads/save_skype$ ./extract.py --help
Usage: extract.py [OPTIONS] FILE

Options:
  -s, --save TEXT  Path to save chats
  --help           Show this message and exit.

alex@mba:/media/alex/Downloads/save_skype$ ./extract.py ~/.Skype/MY_USERNAME/main.db
chat_896_other1_me.txt
chat_1536_me_other2.txt
chat_901_me_other3.txt
chat_2057_me_other4.txt
...

Files saved to .