I have installed the latest version of Yahoo Messenger client and a friend of mine said that it will automatically save my conversations and keep a history of them. I don`t like the idea of having my conversations saved, do you know how can I clear my Yahoo Messenger chat conversations?
It`s true, Yahoo Messenger will automatically save all of your conversations and it will keep them so that you can be able to access/read them later. Most of the chat programs will do the same. You can delete all of your conversations and you can also prevent this from happening again if you will read the entire article as there are two things that you need to check, first is your email client and the second your email address.
Important: You may also want to know that each time when you will perform a Yahoo Messenger installation it will save them again (only on your computer if you will disable the conversation history from your Yahoo email) so you will have to remember what to do when you will install this application in the future.
First thing to do is to start Yahoo Messenger on your computer and make sure that you sign in with your Yahoo password and ID.
Once you`re signed in, click on the first tab called ``Messenger`` and from that list you need to select ``Preferences``. Additionally you can achieve the same results when Yahoo Messenger it`s already opened by pressing ``Ctrl+Shift+P`` keyboard combination.
Great, a new window called ``Yahoo! Messenger Preferences`` will appear and there are a lot of options that allows you to customize your application.
Navigate to this subcategory called ``Conversation History``. It`s really easy but you have to be careful.
As you can see, you can choose ``Do not keep a history of my conversations`` if you want to stop YM (Yahoo Messenger) from recording/keeping a history of your conversations. In order to make this permanently you have to click on ``Apply``.
If you did that you just stopped Yahoo Messenger from saving conversation history but this doesn`t mean that every discussion that you had was also deleted. In order to do that you will have to click on ``View Conversation History`` button.
Once you did that you will be taken to a window where you can view all recent contacts. In order to delete a conversation click on it and then go on the right side and click on the small button called ``Delete entire history``.
After you will click on ``Delete entire history`` button, another confirmation window will appear asking for a confirmation required before permanently deleting your messages. If you want to confirm the deletion of your messages click on ``Delete`` button.
You may encounter an error message, if it happens try to repeat the operation, it should work in the end. My second attempt was successful.
WAIT ! There is more, although you have disabled conversation history from your Yahoo Messenger client, someone else who knows your email id and password can retrieve all you conversations. I know it sounds strange but that`s how it is. Let me show you how to fix this. Make sure that you will login to your Yahoo email. Once you`re being logged in go to ``Options": and from there select ``Messenger Options``.
As you can see this is the ``Conversation History`` section of your Yahoo email. ``Messenger can keep a history of all your conversations. You canbrowse and search your history from any computer you sign in to``. In order to disable it you have to UNCHECK ``Keep a history of my conversations``. Unable to uncheck this box ? If this happens it`s because of the ``SMS Message Home Country``. Select your country, click ``OK``, close the window and open it once again from ``Messenger Options`` and it should work. It worked for me.
If you managed to disable ``Keep a history of my conversations`` from your email, you may also want to delete previous conversations from your email, exactly like Yahoo Messenger client. In order to do this go to your email, make sure that you are being signed in and click on ``Conversations``.
On the right side you will be able to view all kind of stored conversations that you had with different people. You can read or delete them. Here`s how to select all of them ( you can select only some of them, one or more ) if you decide to delete them.
Here is a confirmation message from my conversation history, once I will hit the OK button they will be gone forever. If you will do this, you should be able to read the following message ``There are no messages in your Conversations folder.``
This should be enough but I`ve read that for some people it didn`t work. Well the explanation would be simple. If you logged in from another computer that had Yahoo Messenger installed your conversations could still be there if you had a discussion from that computer. Again, even if you disabled this feature from your Yahoo Messenger client installed on your computer maybe someone else has this activated and every conversation from that computer will be recorded. The best way to test this is to check the other computer/s and see if there are any old conversations saved and delete them. Also, don`t forget that if you will install Yahoo Messenger once again on your computer, by default, the conversation history is enabled so you will have to disable it otherwise it will start saving your conversations.
