Export Transcripts

Any conversation or chat room can be downloaded as a transcript file. This is useful after a live event, for keeping a record of a support conversation, or for archiving a chat room before you clear it.

Exporting is available in both the free and the WebSocket versions.

Where to Export From#

There are two places to start an export, both in your WordPress admin area.

A Chat Room#

Go to Better Messages → Chat Rooms, open the room, and find the Actions section. Click Export next to Export Transcript. See Chat Rooms for everything else you can do from that screen.

This is usually the one you want after running an event, since the room is where the conversation happened.

Any Conversation#

Go to Better Messages → Administration → Messages. Enter the conversation's ID in the Conversation ID field, or click Thread #... on any message to filter the list down to that conversation. The Export Transcript button appears next to the message count.

This works for every conversation type — one-to-one conversations, group conversations and chat rooms alike.

Site administrators only

Exporting a transcript requires the WordPress Manage Options capability. Roles added under Roles That Can Access Administration can read messages in the admin area, but cannot download transcripts. See Role-based access and Site moderators for how those roles are granted.

Choosing a Format#

Format	Best for
Plain text	Reading and archiving. One line per message, with the date, the sender and the message.
Web page	Sharing or publishing. A styled HTML page that looks like the conversation, with avatars and images in place.
Spreadsheet (CSV)	Sorting, filtering and quoting. One row per message, opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.

Two extra options are available:

Include avatars — on by default for the web page format. Turn it off for a plain, text-only page.
Include user IDs — off by default. Turn it on to record which account each message belongs to. Guests appear with a negative ID, which is how the plugin identifies them.

The file downloads straight to your computer. Nothing is stored on your server and nothing is sent anywhere else.

What the Transcript Contains#

Every message in the conversation, oldest first, with the date and time in your site's time zone and the sender's display name. Guests are included under the names they used.

Attachments are listed by file name. If a file is publicly reachable, the name links to it, and images are shown inline in the web page format.

The following are not included:

Messages still awaiting pre-moderation
System messages such as a user joining, being muted or being banned
Deleted messages, which appear as This message was deleted, matching what participants see

Encrypted conversations

Conversations using end-to-end encryption cannot be exported. Their content can only be read by the participants, so there is nothing readable for the server to write into a file.

Attachments and Private Files#

If File Protection Proxy is enabled under Better Messages → Settings → Attachments, chat files are not reachable by direct URL — they are served only to authorised users through the plugin. In that case a transcript lists attachments by file name without a link, because any link it wrote would either fail or expire.

Turn that setting off if you want your transcripts to carry working links to shared files.

Large Conversations#

Transcripts are written as the file downloads rather than being assembled in memory first, so a busy chat room with tens of thousands of messages exports without exhausting your server's PHP memory limit.