Opening Chatwindows Wipes Everything Clean

Hey guys. I have a huge issue i need help with. If i try to open the chatbox to read it, everything gets wiped clean. after i toogled a round with + everything is totally blank. I can not seem to find the solution to fix this. Been playing on and off since 2006 so im familiar with in game settings and functions, but never encounterd this befor. Anyone have any clue as to what it may be?

Happens to me occasionally, never found a solution other than logging out to character select screen and logging back in. Assuming it's a battlemod thing, or windower in general.

This used to happen with me also in the past. Not sure if you multibox, but if you do, i think sandbox plugin can alleviate a bit the problem (not completely fix it).

I think it used to happen to me when i had massive incoming text flowing in my chat log. Also, maybe can alleviate a bit more the problem by filtering part of the junk. If youre fighting without dmg filter you will see thousands of numbers flowing. Try filtering those too.

Known multibox isssue with no solution. Like said above, Sandbox helps, but doesn't fix 100%.

This started happening to me in a big way around January of this year, mostly while dualboxing but also while playing solo. Sandbox does absolutely nothing, clearing chat logs out of the temp directory does nothing, its not battlemod as its not running. I remember it happening very rarely before that, but now its aggrevatingly common. Doesnt even need a full chatlog, I can have the log break just after login and stay broken until all instances of FFXI are restarted, only to break again immediately.

Whatever changed, it changed relatively recently, and this issue is absolutely pushing me to communicate via Discord more than in game chat.

sounds like a different issue, i think OP doesn't have to restart, it just randomly flushs all previously received chat massages out but you are still able to receive new ones without restarting ffxi.
its a very old bug and i'm not even 100% sure if its related to windower or if it doesn't also happen with vanilla client.

You can receive new texts but you cant store them, plus you lose everything when you expand the chat box. Its quite annoying as only “fix” is to restart entire game.

I believe there is something about windower on it. I play on ashita and, even though i cant garantee i never had this, its just so rare i can go months before seeing it (tbf i just remember once or twice out of like 3 years using it).

Facing the same problem as OP, and I don't multibox. Extremely annoying sometimes as the only way to fix is to restart the game. A fix would be greatly appreciated.

Had this same issue when i came back a week ago. You need to go to where ever you have your ffxi game files mine was Program Files (x86)\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\TEMP than delete everything in the temp folder. After you do that make new folders with the name of the character for whatever characters you have. Once you have done than just log in with each char on vanilla than once fully logged in you can do shutdown. After all that is done you can log into windower like normal and chat windows should be all fixed for good (at least it solved my issues).

Don't multibox either but have this issue pop up fairly often (often enough to be very annoying). I'll try this and hope to God it fixes this for me lol. Thanks for posting.

Find your Square Enix folder. The one with FFXI installed. Then find "Final Fantasy XI". Next is "TEMP". In this place a folder with your characters name. This will fix this issue.

I tried exactly doing this, and the same problem occurred. 5 runs into ambuscade and window 2 chat bugged.

This trick with the temp folder seems to be working for me. Need more testing but thank you so much everyone

It has been 2 weeks of testing temp folder method and unfortunately the same problem is still happening. Would really appreciate if someone can further help me/us troubleshoot this issue. Thanks!

It used to be that the Sandbox addon would resolve the issue for folks (something to do with how it affects chat for multibox purposes).

I recently returned for a "just visiting" month of FFXI, and this go around Sandbox didn't resolve it for me on it's own, but the combination of Sandbox, ChatMon, and Send seemed to resolve it for me. I'm not sure if all three are required, and the only one I actually leverage is "chatmon", but give it a shot and see if it works for you.