Using Google Chat in Gmail it is impossible to select all the text in the conversation. I often want to quickly copy the text from one conversation and email it or instant message it to another contact. The problem is that the small chat windows, even if you pop them out and expand them to the screen's full height, will not show the entire text of a long conversation. You can select the immediately visible text on one screen, but while you are dragging and highlighting, the screen will not automatically scroll when you reach the top or bottom edge. 

Also, when you try to highlight some text and then maybe scroll and shift select some more text that does not work either. As soon as you start scrolling the currently highlighted text is deselected. So effectively, the most text you can select at one time is as much as you can fit on one screen.

Of course it's always possible to go to your chat history and look up the full text of the conversation there, but that is a very cumbersome workaround for something that should be as easy as Select All, Copy, Paste.

Has anyone found a better way?

I love Gmail and Google Chat, but is there a way to make copying the text in a conversation suck less?