Moving or Sharing ChatGPT Conversations

Happy New Year 2025 folks. Congratulations! If you are reading this, I have some good news for you. Yes, you made it into the new year. You successfully navigated all the challenges of 2024, crossed the portal in time and took your seat in the new ship, well before the hatches were drawn. Get ready for another 365 day ride, by God's grace.

As we closed 2024, I ran into a 'little' problem. I couldn't log on to OpenAI's chatgpt.com, and that was a big problem. These days, losing access to AI could be compared to losing access to your ISP account at the turn of the century. Life continues, but it is really inconveniencing! When I tried to log in, all I got was the OpenAI logo, nothing else. As an AI enthusiast, (some would say, evangelist) I had a lot of 'stuff' in my chats: personal, business, research, etc.

I won't bore you with all the suggestions that I followed to try and fix the problem, but it was all in vain. This happened on a MacBook! By the time you delete all cookies, clear out all browser data and restart a Mac, you know the problem is major. All to no avail, though. But being the curious type, I tried opening ChatGPT on Chrome, since this was on Firefox. Still no joy. Next, I tried Safari. To my surprise, that worked! OK, there was a pattern here. Now, I tried the ChatGPT app for Mac. That also worked. Hmmm? I returned to Firefox and Chrome. I tried all sorts, but still, nothing worked. Hmmm!

Next, I tried logging in again in Firefox, this time using my Google account. At first, that failed; but I was running Firefox in a private window. I switched to a public window, and that worked. OK, was Google trying to fence off the access? Why would my Google email work but not my work email? I couldn't care; I "needed" the service. If a Google account was the way in, I would use that instead. Needs must! I successfully logged in using my Google account. All's well that ends well? Not quite. There was just one tiny problem. All my conversations were in the existing/old account that I was had my private email address. How to migrate them!?

A quick search on the Internet returned two broad genres of answers:

1. It is not possible to do an export and import
2. You can, but the data may be all mixed up

The can-do group suggested an export of all one's data from the existing ChatGPT account, and then re-importing said data into the new account. This got me thinking: what if I exported each conversation instead. Could I then import that? Well, since I couldn't access the old account on Firefox, I logged in on the ChatGPT desktop app, and followed the process to export/share a conversation.

Well, it turns out that the output you get is not a file but a link. I had hoped to end up with a JSON, YAML, raw, or some kind of artefact that I could then open or import in my new account.

OK, I thought, I am going to have to type all the questions again. But, that would take a long time and the answers could be different - due to temperature and other settings.

Then I noticed something. When I open the "share" link in a browser, each question in the conversation has an edit option (icon of a pencil). Interesting! Could I edit someone else's conversation by changing or resending the question? Actually, no.

It turns out that when I click on the icon and either edit or resend the question, the whole conversation appears in my new account! PS: The caveat here is that one has to be logged in to the new account when opening the link to the shared conversation. The great thing is that all the questions and answers are preserved. Sweet!

Now, I have successfully copied all the conversations from my other ChatGPT account into this new account. Here is something to bear in mind. If the order of the conversations is of significance, make sure to start with the oldest conversation first, else, you will end up with the reverse order in your new account.

If you ever have to share a conversation, copy, move or merge ChatGPT accounts, now you have a solution.

That's it.

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