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I am an avid chatter in the room called shadow's den. But some of @Shadow's replies refer to old messages that can't be seen. I have to zoom to 67% in my browser, look what is highlighted, highlight it with the mouse, right click, and see the preview of search Google for. Then if I can't get an idea of what it is (sometimes I can), I post it to a notepad and read it - when on a PC.
Can Stack Exchange implement some way to show the old messages?
When you enter chat roughly the last 100 posted messages are loaded. Any messages outside of that batch that you're interested in need to be loaded by the user by clicking the "load older messages" at the top of the message list. Clicking that button will load another 100 messages.
Users can ping you and reply to any message, no matter how old the message is. That zooming helped you out in your specific case was mere luck.
When a message is a reply to an earlier (or when constructed carefully a reply to a future message) an arrow appears in front of the message. When clicked the full chat transcript will open with the replied to message highlighted and focused.
In a picture:
