Yahoo Message Archive Decoder reads Yahoo! Messenger archive files (.dat files) and presents them in a format that you can read.

Unlike the utility provided by Yahoo! Messenger, using this program you can decode them without connecting to the Internet as long as you have the .dat files. You don't need the password of the message archive owner.

This software supports decoding of normal conversation messages, private messages, conferences, SMS/Mobile Messages and .hst files to HTML or plain text, complete with time stamps, smileys and font formatting (typeface, bold, italic, underline, font size and colors). It supports Unicode text (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and all non-Latin characters).

You can also turn on someone's archiving option and secretly log his or her conversation.

Main features:
- Decodes the message archive without logging in (offline mode and no passwords required)
- Supports normal conversations, private messages, conferences and SMSes
- Up to 20 times faster than the Yahoo! Messenger internal viewer
- Ability to decode a single file, all files in a folder, following Yahoo! Messenger folder structure, even command-line interface is available.
- Supports savable and customizable HTML formatted output, complete with time stamps, smileys and font formatting (typeface, bold, italic, underline, font size and colors) and plain text.
- Recovers saved passwords (including version 5, 6 and 7)
- Ability to change any user's message archiving options directly
- Date range selection (to select specific files' date to decode) and modifiable time zone
- Access password to prevent unauthorized use of the program
- Advanced auto-detection of user names, folders, archiving options etc.
- Forensics-friendly features such as complete date/time stamping, decoding of .hst file (old archive format) and corrupted file detection