Google Talk stored all of your custom messages that you have entered in a file in your user profile directory.

The file is located at “%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\status”

Inside you will find a file named in the format [userid]-history.txt.

So if your Gmail account is John.Dow@gmail.com the filename will be john.dow_gmail.com-history.txt (besides, there is usually only one file there anyway ;-) ).

The file format is very easy. It start with a first line which has the character “1” in it. I’m not sure what it stands for and what it do but you can disregard it.

All of the other lines are your custom message.

There are two statuses that can have custom messages that you can set for them. The “Available” status and the “Busy” (reffered internally as dnd – Do Not Disturbe).

Each two lines represent one custom message. The first line of each one of them represents one of the two statuses that this custome message refers to (available or dnd). The second line is your custom message.

There is no way of delete your previous custom messages in the current Google Talk GUI (Its currently true for the versions I’ve worked with 1.0.0.64 and 1.0.0.66 but may be irrelevant for future versions).

In order to delete these unnecessary custom messages do the following things:

  1. Close Google Talk
  2. Open the file (the location and name are mentioned above)
  3. Find the message text
  4. Delete that line and the line above it.
  5. Save the file
  6. Start Google Talk

That’s it, you won’t see it.

Of course, instead of deleting the line you can also edit it to change it.

Hope this helps someone.