Many of us use Yahoo Messenger and chose to store their chat records on the computer using the archiving feature Yahoo Messenger provides us with.

Archiving with Instant Messengers is a very useful and helpful method of going through older chat logs, same with the Yahoo! Messenger archiving.

Though still there is a security related feature with Yahoo Messenger because of which you cannot access your chat archives unless you are logged in with that user, because Yahoo encrypts all your chat logs unlike MSN messenger which stores your chat logs as an XML file in your My Documents.

Unless your logged in would include, when your not connected to the internet or not able to connect to your Yahoo! Messenger or have logged in using a different user id to Yahoo Messenger.

There have had been times when I desperately wanted to access my chat archives to check on important information and I couldn't because of being offline.

That was till I used this nice little indexing plugin called YIM Archive Plug-in for Google Desktop Search, using which i could access all my Yahoo archived logs even when I am not online using the Desktop search.

For using this utility you have to first download and install Google Desktop Search if you do not already have it installed.

There is another way with which you can definitely access the logs which will include you downloading a software called Yahoo Messenger Archive Decoder. 

Yahoo Message Archive Decoder reads Yahoo Messenger archive files (.dat files) and presents them in a format that you can read.

Unlike the utility provided by Yahoo Messenger, using this program you can decode them without connecting to the Internet as long as you have the *.dat files. Moreover, the message archive owner's password is not needed.

So now that you know ( unless you are not on a private computer ) before you get to a public computer make sure you check whether these softwares are not installed and always check preferences to de-select storing your chat archives.

Article Downloads: YIM Archive Plug-in | Yahoo Messenger Archive Decoder

YIM Arvhice pre-requisites: Google Desktop Search

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