my chat history is not complete, there is a lot of information missing which is really important to me
It depends on how your Spark/Openfire setup is configured, because Spark itself does not store a full, server-side message history.
A few things you can check:
Local Chat History in Spark
Spark saves chat transcripts locally on your computer, not on the server
If you recently:
- switched computers,
- deleted your Spark profile,
- reinstalled Spark, or
- logged in with a new user profile on your OS,
then the old history will not appear.
You can verify your local history folder here:
Windows:
C:\Users\<your-username>\AppData\Roaming\Spark\user\<your-username>@<server>\transcripts\
macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/Spark/user/<your-username>@<server>/transcripts/
Linux:
~/.Spark/user/<your-username>@<server>/transcripts/
Check whether the missing conversations exist as XML files there.
Openfire Monitoring Service (Server-side logs)
If your admin uses the Monitoring Service plugin, the server may store all message history centrally.
Ask your Openfire administrator to check: Openfire Admin Console > Plugins > Monitoring > Message Archive
If the plugin was not installed earlier or was reconfigured, some history may not exist.
what i don’t get is, some messages from 2023 and 2024 that i needed are missing, but some from that same time still appear…
It is important to note that Spark does not retrieve a complete message history from the server. By default, Spark stores chat transcripts locally, on the machine where the client is used. If you have used Spark on multiple machines, reinstalled it, changed operating systems, or logged in under different OS user profiles, then parts of the locally stored history will not be available on your current installation.
Unless the Openfire Monitoring plugin is installed and properly configured, Openfire will not keep a server-side archive of messages. In that case, Spark can only show what is in its local transcript files. If the Monitoring plugin was enabled only for part of the period you are checking, that would also explain why some conversations from the same timeframe appear while others do not.
You may want to verify:
- Whether you used Spark on more than one device or OS profile.
- Whether any old Spark profile folders still exist on another computer or backup.
- Whether the Monitoring plugin was enabled during the time in question.
If server-side archiving is important for your use case, I recommend enabling the Monitoring plugin (or another XEP-0313 compliant archive solution) to avoid similar issues in the future.
Let me know if you want help locating the local transcript directories or checking the Monitoring settings.