, from the USA

of course I meant

the history window will open showing you the most recent history

and

Export in unencrypted form – as a text document
(you can also export to an encrypted file and as a web page document.

It took me a while to find the answer in my PC version, I hope it applies to the Mac version.

In my version, in the main chat window

1 – click on history

2 – the history window will open shoeing you the most recent history – in my version QQ 2009 – English version – you will see a small calendar, there you can select the date and the page of history you want to view – not much help for searching – But

3 – in the top right of the history window is symbol that looks like a loud speaker and next to it the word “more”

4 – click on that symbol and a new “Message manager” window opens showing your list of contacts and along the top you have the option to export or search.

I have found the search to be a bit puzzling, not as useful as I would like.

Exporting the chat history ( I exported “all” meaning all contacts and all conversations) has proved more useful. Export in unencrypted form to text and then open the export file in Word etc. Do your search there.

PS There are several programs which will examine the QQ “.db” Chat History files – used by network monitors to track transmissions and topics.

Why did I mention encrypted – this is a quote from the website
http://www.forensicfocus.com/forensic-investigation-of-instant-messenger-histories
“QQ messenger is probably the worst for investigators to deal with. It stores history in OLE containers, which are viewable by DocFile Viewer, but the data inside is encrypted with Blowfish algorithm! It sounds formidable, doesn’t it? We have good news! The key to decrypt is the QQ owner account number. Although QQ allows encrypting with a custom key, a limited number of people use this strong protective option. ”

I hope that helps.

So if you want to meet Chinese people it is a pretty good method. Just use your non Chinese name on QQ and lots of people will stop bu to say hello.

I was prodded by your question and asked some friends in China. Finally I found someone who knew how to do it.

1 – at the main QQ interface/screen click on the group chat icon/ the two conversations icon

2 – when it opens, right click on a group conversation

3 – a new menu will appear,

4- in the new menu, click on “group message settings”

5- a new menu will appear, I am told that the best choice there is “only message quantity is shown”

Try it and see which option you prefer.

Thanks for the info on QQ. I actually have a major beef with QQ groups, and am curious if you’ve found any way around it. Whenever you join a group, you are in turn, permanently logged into it. So if 12 people are having a rapid fire conversation about some topic I am not interested in, and meanwhile I am chatting with somebody else, their message window keeps chiming in with all their contents. If you close it, it just opens again as soon as another message goes through. This has effectively prevented me from making use of QQ groups since it is so incredibly annoying to have an endless stream of messages popping up and blinking all over my desktop.

Another point, to get QQ to show Chinese characters you have to set the Windows “non unicode font” to a Chinese font (in the Windows control panel regional and language settings).

For those people scared to install the QQ software you can use several text chat programs, such as “Pidgin” they can be a bit tricky to set up with QQ and the interface is not as nice or as sophisticated.

For example QQ has the ability to grab a copy of a screen area. If you see a web page you like showing some photo or image advertisement you don’t understand, just use the “area select” and hit enter and it sends to the person you are talking to. Great for asking your Chinese friends – “what do these characters say /what does this sign mean?”.

Another feature, it is very easy to set up chat groups in QQ.

As far as I know QQ email works just like regular e-mail, and therefore you can send messages to people outside of the QQ network. However, among the QQ user demographic e-mail is generally not a very common means of communication. If a user wants to relay a message to another user who is currently not signed in, the typical protocol is to send him a regular QQ IM. As soon as he logs in, he will see the message and reply, thus leaving e-mail completely out of the equation.