How to open and read your Skype chat history export (.tar and messages.json)

What happened to Skype, and to your chat history

Microsoft's page Skype is retiring in May 2025: What you need to know says:

• Skype closed on 5 May 2025, for free and paid users alike. Skype for Business was not part of this.
• Exports: you could request a copy of your history in the export portal until 15 June 2026. Microsoft warned that data deletion began on 1 April 2026, so a later export might not hold your full history.
• Deletion: if you were not active in Skype and Teams Free in the period Microsoft names, your data is completely deleted after 15 June 2026.
• Teams Free: if you used Skype between December 2024 and February 2025 and then moved to, and used, Teams Free before 1 December 2025, your Skype chat and call history stays available there.

Microsoft's pages give no export date later than 15 June 2026. This guide is about reading the export you already downloaded, and main.db, the database file of the classic Skype for Windows, if you still have one.

What is in a Skype export

Microsoft's page How do I export or delete my Skype data? describes it:

• You could ask for Conversations, Files or both. The download is a .tar file that you extract your messages and files from. Its name usually looks like 8_skypename_export.tar, with your Skype name in it.
• Once it is unpacked, your messages are in one file, messages.json.
• Exported files can include pictures, videos, video messages, voicemail and call recordings.

messages.json is a text file in JSON, a format for exchanging data between programs (RFC 8259). It holds your messages as data: field names, ids and times around the words, and Skype's own HTML-like tags inside the message text. That is why it is hard to read as it is.

Option 1: Teams Free, if you moved there in time

If you used Skype between December 2024 and February 2025 and moved to Teams Free before 1 December 2025, Microsoft says your Skype chat and call history is still there. Sign in to Teams Free with your Skype account. Not everything was moved: Microsoft lists chats with work or school Teams accounts, Skype for Business chats, chats with yourself, private conversations and bot content as not migrated.

Option 2: unpack the .tar and read messages.json yourself (free)

Windows 10 and Windows 11 can unpack the export without other software. Microsoft's steps:

1. Press Windows + R, type cmd and select OK.
2. Go to the folder with the export, for example with cd Downloads.
3. Type tar -xvf and the name of your file, as below, and press Enter.

tar -xvf 8_skypename_export.tar

Then open messages.json in Microsoft Edge: press Ctrl+O and choose the file. If it shows as one dense block, tick Pretty-print to see it indented. That changes only the view, not the file (Microsoft's page on Edge's JSON viewer). A text editor opens it too.

Good: free, and nothing to install. Less good: you read data, not a chat, and the photos are separate files in the unpacked folder, not next to their messages.

Option 3: Microsoft's skype-parser viewer

Microsoft's export page recommends a viewer for messages.json: you open index.html from the skype-parser folder in your browser, browse to messages.json and select Load. When we checked the download link on 15 November 2026, it led to an error page instead of the file. If you saved the skype-parser folder earlier, those are the steps to use it.

Option 4: Chatwright ($4.99)

Chatwright is a Windows app from Karelia Labs that opens the chat history you exported from Skype and shows it as a chat. It opens:

• the .tar file from Skype's export, as it is. There is no need to unpack it first.
• a folder you already unpacked the export into, or messages.json on its own.
• main.db, the database file of the classic Skype for Windows.

1. Install Chatwright: Get it from Microsoft Store.
2. Start it and press Ctrl+O, or drop the .tar file on the window.
3. Choose a conversation. The list shows how many messages each one has and the years it spans.

Each conversation reads like a chat: your messages on the right, everyone else's on the left, and a separator for every day. Replies show the message they quote, edited messages are marked Edited, and a deleted message leaves a note. Calls, missed calls and group changes are written in plain words, and Skype's emoticons appear as emoji. Photos that are in the export appear in the chat; click one to see it full size. Videos, voice messages and files show their name and size, and a file that was not in the export is marked.

Search looks through every conversation at once. You can narrow it to one person, to dates or to the conversation you are reading, then jump from a result to the message, with your words highlighted. Statistics for each conversation show messages per year, who wrote most, the weekdays you talked most and your busiest days.

To keep your history, export one conversation or all of them as a web page that opens in any browser with the photos inside, as a PDF ready to print, as plain text, as a CSV table or as JSON. You can export only the messages between two dates, and save the photos, videos and files of those conversations into a folder next to the export.

Chatwright only reads your export and never overwrites a file when saving. It works offline: no account, no tracking, no update checks. Try a sample opens a built-in sample export, so you can see how it works before you open your own.

Which way to choose

What to expect from Chatwright

• It shows what is in your export. A file that is not in the export, for example because only Conversations were exported, is marked in the chat. Chatwright cannot bring it back.
• Tested with exports we made. We had no real Skype export to test with. Chatwright was built and tested with exports we wrote to follow the publicly described structure of Skype's export, and with a main.db made with the tables of the old Skype for Windows.
• Large exports: Chatwright reads the export as it goes instead of loading it all at once, and reads a conversation when you open it.
• PDF export needs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime, which is part of Windows 11 and installed on most Windows 10 PCs. Everything else works without it.
• main.db is copied to a temporary folder and read from the copy, so the original stays as it was.
• Windows only: Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11, 64-bit (x64).

Microsoft's dates and steps are from the two Microsoft support pages linked above, and Edge's JSON viewer is described on Microsoft Learn, all checked on 15 November 2026. We checked the skype-parser download link the same day. Chatwright's results are based on our tests with exports we made to the publicly described structure of Skype's export, not with a real Skype export.