How to copy Skype text without timestamp?

Skype is so annoying to me when I try to copy text from my chat; i.e. it alsway include the timestamp when pasted.

How to copy only the plain text?

Solution 1:

Follow these steps:

In Skype:

1. Go to Tools → Options → IM & SMS

2. Click Show advanced options

   

3. In Pressing Ctrl+V will select Paste message as plain text

   

4. Save

Solution 2:

Windows-only Solution

I've made a quick autohotkey script that runs when you press ctrl + C inside Skype. It basically copies selected, runs a regex replace on it and stores it in your clipboard.

The regex is quite naive, and makes a few assumptions, which may not be correct as I haven't rigorously tested it:

• If there's a timestamp, it's at the very beginning of a line
• it's in square brackets and first character is a number
• there a space after it, followed by nickname, colon, and extra space

Here's the .ahk script itself. It's app-sensitive based on the ahk_class tSkMainForm, which might possibly change in the future updates of Skype.

#IfWinActive ahk_class tSkMainForm
    ^c::
        Clipboard := ""
        Send ^c
        ClipWait, 1
        if ( Clipboard ) {
            Clipboard := RegExReplace( Clipboard, "m)^\[\d.*?\] .*?: " )
        }
    Return
#IfWinActive

If you do want to keep the nickname, just remove the .*?: at the end of the regex.

Solution 3:

I'm on a Mac and made a very simple little app for removing the timestamp and username from copied Skype chats. There's a "How To Use" in the linked dropbox folder. Basically it will clean up what is in your clipboard and create a new text doc, or you can paste a long list of continuous chats into a text doc and then clean up from there.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0vlekavn5vhohvq/AAAMuDdlUxC9ev24yw0kS5kea?dl=0

I used Automator and a bash sed script to make these applets.
It looks for the timestamp brackets and an ending : pattern and removes the whole block.

Solution 4:

In the latest version of Lync named Skype for Business you can triple click inside a message then copy the text with CTRL+C

This allows for copy/pasting only the message text and not the timestamp.