MSN Messenger History Merger

NEW POST: does the save history option have to be selected of keeping history in messenger

fernandof — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:05:40 GMT

A question on behalf Ronald:

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Ronald Says:
March 10, 2008 at 8:47 pm e

Hi,
Just a simple question: does the save history option have to be selected of keeping history in messenger or does it save these xml files alltoether?
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And my answer:
Hi Ronald,
The anser is absolutely yes: this tool works on the history files generated by the Messenger. Those files are genered by the Messenger only if the Save History option is selected.

- F

CLOSED ISSUE: Similar messages sometimes wrongly identified as duplicate messages

fernandof — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:19:24 GMT

Due to a bug in the IsDuplicateOf method, similar messages (that have the same content) sent in a short time period can be wrongly identified as duplicate messages and removed from the merged version.
Comments: Fixed on version 1.5

CREATED RELEASE: 1.5 Production (Mar 03, 2008)

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:19:06 GMT

Fixed problem with similar messages (same content, different sending time) wrongly identified as duplicate messages.

RELEASED: 1.5 Production (Mar 03, 2008)

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 05:19:06 GMT

Fixed problem with similar messages (same content, different sending time) wrongly identified as duplicate messages.

CREATED ISSUE: Similar messages sometimes wrongly identified as duplicate messages

fernandof — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 03:04:53 GMT

UPDATED RELEASE: 1.4 Production (Feb 27, 2008)

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:42:31 GMT

Fixed problem with duplicate messages being merged with wrong sessions.

CLOSED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

fernandof — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:41:17 GMT

First of all, thank you for creating this great tool. I love it.

Here comes my question, I have two history files, one with 11 sessions and the other one has 14 sessions. The 11 sessions are actually the heading ones in the other file so I expect to get the merged file with 14 sessions. However, once they are merged, the result file (nicely formatted :) has 22 sessions. It is not a major issue but if I can I would want to retain the original info as much as possible. What is the criteria to split within a session?

Thank you,
Mark
Comments: Fixed in version 1.4

Mark, good job on finding this bug.

CREATED RELEASE: 1.4 Production (Feb 27, 2008)

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:40:24 GMT

Fixed problem with duplicate messages being merged with wrong sessions.

REOPENED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

fernandof — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:58:10 GMT

Merged version sometimes messes up the conversation when origin history files have the duplications.
In the attached Desktop.rar sample 2 identical files are incorrectly merged: duplications are correctly being dropped but original conversations are not being honoured.

COMMENTED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

fernandof — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:58:10 GMT

This is a question, not an issue.
Please post questions on the dicussions board.

** Closed by fernandof 2/22/2008 6:30 PM

COMMENTED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

MarkWang — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:28:56 GMT

The reason I posted my first query here was because I thought this was, well, a bug. To prove my point, I attached a sample log file. After you unrar it, try to merge them together. These two folders are essentially identical, so the result should be unmodified. However, the number of sessions changes from 4 to 7 and some of the messages within the same session get broken into a new session.

CLOSED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

fernandof — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:30:22 GMT

First of all, thank you for creating this great tool. I love it.

Here comes my question, I have two history files, one with 11 sessions and the other one has 14 sessions. The 11 sessions are actually the heading ones in the other file so I expect to get the merged file with 14 sessions. However, once they are merged, the result file (nicely formatted :) has 22 sessions. It is not a major issue but if I can I would want to retain the original info as much as possible. What is the criteria to split within a session?

Thank you,
Mark
Comments: This is a question, not an issue.
Please post questions on the dicussions board.

COMMENTED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

fernandof — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:28:47 GMT

Hi Mark,
Just to keep this site nice and tidy, please post queries on the discussions board as the Issues are used to track, well, issues... :)
To answer your question, the main rule is explained with the following example:
You start a conversation from your work box from 3pm to 4pm and leave that session opened. From your home you start a new conversation with the same recipient from 9pm to 10pm. On the next day you go back to work and continue the already opened conversation.
In our example, the log files record 2 conversations (1 on each log file), but the merged version will correctly show 3 different conversations:

Work: 3pm---4pm [session is kept open]----------------------------midnight------------------[continue opened session]9am--10am
Home: 8pm-----9pm
Merged: 3pm--4pm 8pm-----9pm 9am--10am

If you're a dev you can check out the unit tests to get a better understanding of those rules.

CREATED ISSUE: Splitting within the same session

MarkWang — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:58:11 GMT

NEW POST: The source isn't available

fernandof — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:36:32 GMT

czeeric wrote:
I followed the guide on this website, and set up SvnBridge. When I tried to checkout MsnHistoryMerger with SVN, there's no errors - but the folder (trunk) is empty. I am hoping to download the source and play around to make it merge MSN history from my MSN mac 6.1 with WLM 8.0 on my windows.

Yeah, I'm aware of this issue. During one of the upgrades of the CodePlex web site all my projects lost their source code and corresponding chagesets :(
Good thing I'm always posting the source code alongside the binaries... On the Releases tab you'll find the source code in the "Msn Messenger History Merger v1.3 sources and binaries (zip)" package. It's not ideal, but it will provide you with the full source code.

Enjoy,
Fernando

NEW POST: The source isn't available

czeeric — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:58:44 GMT

I followed the guide on this website, and set up SvnBridge. When I tried to checkout MsnHistoryMerger with SVN, there's no errors - but the folder (trunk) is empty. I am hoping to download the source and play around to make it merge MSN history from my MSN mac 6.1 with WLM 8.0 on my windows.

CLOSED ISSUE: Merging different language files

fernandof — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:47:02 GMT

Let's say you have a MSN install in the dutch language at your work, and a MSN install in english at home.
If i merge the files between languages then the order of appearance is incorrect, because of the different date formats.
At the moment i don't have access to 2 files and don't know if it is possible to edit this item, so i could add them later on.

Thx,
Vincent
Comments: Merging different languages is handled correctly.
The format of the date&time is honored and it won't be changed by the utility. This means that if 2 history files have different formats, the unified history file will have 2 different formats as well.

COMMENTED ISSUE: Merging different language files

fernandof — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:38:29 GMT

Thanks for the contribution vinzzz.
If the ordering is correct it means you get the correct conversations - which is the primary goal of this utility. :)
I agree that the format is not maintained correctly, but unfortunately I cannot fix that. The format is decided by the MSN client based on the locale of the workstation. I could re-format all date/times to use the locale of the workstation running this utility, but I'm not sure it's a desired behavior.

I will close this issue as there is no problem merging different languages. If you wish me to create a new version in which the locales of 2 different files will be overriden with the locale of the workstation running this utility - say so and I'll create a new feature.

Cheers,
F

COMMENTED ISSUE: Merging different language files

vinzzz — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:39:45 GMT

I did a new test and it seems the order of appearance is going the right way, the only thing is the format of the date... i merged 2 files together, one dutch and one english. A few lines of the result:

16-3-2007 16:03:09 Adriënne... :D vinzzz test
16-3-2007 16:03:11 Adriënne... :D vinzzz test2
16-3-2007 16:08:05 Adriënne... :D vinzzz test3
3/16/2007 4:41:00 PM Adriënne... :D vinzzz test
3/16/2007 4:42:10 PM Adriënne... :D vinzzz test2
3/16/2007 4:44:37 PM Adriënne... :D vinzzz test3

COMMENTED ISSUE: Duplicate items are not removed

fernandof — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:31:42 GMT

When merging files that were merged in the past, the application does not remove duplicate items and instead treat all messages as messages that needed to be merged. A more desired behaviour would be that the application will detect those duplicated items and remove then from the merging file.

Note that this only happen when the utility runs on an already merged file: merging A and B to get AB and then merging the AB with A again.
Comments: ** Comment from web user: fernandof **

This issue is closed as of version 1.2, so the latest version (1.3) correctly handles duplicate messages.
If that is not the case, please attach sample files and I'll look into it.