Do you need to recover deleted or missing WhatsApp messages? It's certainly possible, depending on the situation.
Below, you'll learn how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages on your iPhone or Android device. We'll then teach you how to set up an advanced WhatsApp backup plan to ensure you never lose any of your WhatsApp messages again.
In order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages, you must have enabled Chat Backup in the app's settings. To reach this, tap the Settings tab. It's on the bottom bar of the iPhone app; on Android, open the three-dot menu at the top-right and choose Settings.
From there, head to Chats > Chat backup. Here (under Auto Backup on iOS and Back up to Google Drive on Android), the app offers several backup frequencies (along with the option to encrypt your WhatsApp backups):
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On Android, WhatsApp makes a local backup every night, but this won't help you if you lose your phone. This is why cloud backups are vital.
WhatsApp deletes older backup files as you create new ones. The iPhone app only keeps the latest backup file, while the Android version keeps "up to the last seven days' worth" of backup files. Keep that in mind as you choose the right backup frequency for your needs.
By having daily auto-backups, you'll be able to easily recover WhatsApp messages soon after deleting them. On the other hand, weekly auto-backups will allow you to go further back in time to recover deleted WhatsApp messages, at the expense of losing recent chat messages.
For a more advanced backup plan for Android devices, scroll down to the "An Advanced WhatsApp Backup Strategy for Android" section below.
Before we look at recovering deleted WhatsApp messages, there's a chance that you might have just archived a missing chat, not deleted it. But what's the difference?
Archiving removes the chat from your list, allowing you to hide conversations that you're done with for now.
You can unarchive a chat at any time to access it again, and archiving doesn't delete anything in the chat. Conversely, deleting a chat erases its contents, so they're no longer accessible to you.
On iPhone, when you archive a chat, you can immediately reverse the archival by shaking your device and choosing Undo to recover the archived chat. But even if you miss this, it's easy to retrieve archived WhatsApp chats later.
To unarchive a WhatsApp chat on iPhone:
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To unarchive a chat on Android:
Wondering how to get back deleted WhatsApp messages after backing them up? You can restore your WhatsApp backup by simply uninstalling and reinstalling WhatsApp on your device.
When you reinstall the app, you will be prompted to restore your message history from the backup file. Tap Restore and you'll retrieve everything from the latest backup. Make sure to do it when prompted, as you can't restore the backup file later.
This method of recovering deleted WhatsApp messages works on both Android and iPhone, as long as you have a backup. Keep in mind that you can only recover backed-up messages within your selected auto-backup frequency, however.
For instance, if you've set the app to back up daily, you can recover any deleted chats before the next daily backup occurs.
But if the app has made a new backup since you deleted certain messages, they're lost for good.
Hopefully, restoring your backup file allowed you to retrieve any deleted media from your chats. If that didn't work, however, read our guide to recovering deleted photos from WhatsApp.
On Android, you can simply open a file explorer app and navigate to /WhatsApp/Media. From there, simply sift through the folders until you find the deleted photos you want to recover.
On iPhone, you should have a backup copy of images saved to your device if you have the Save to Camera Roll option enabled at Settings > Chats in WhatsApp.
Check the above guide for additional methods of media recovery.
Getting deleted messages back after a new WhatsApp backup has run is slightly more difficult. Your success will depend on your selected auto-backup frequency.
Note that the below strategy only works on Android devices, since the OS lets you access local backup files. If you're using an iPhone, your only other method is to restore an iPhone backup that you made before deleting the WhatsApp chats. There are third-party apps that claim to help you recover WhatsApp chats, but they aren't cheap and offer no guarantees. Whether you use these is up to how much you value the missing messages.
Before we dive into the process, here's an overview of restoring older WhatsApp chats on Android:
As mentioned before, WhatsApp on Android retains several days of chat backup files. One is, of course, the latest chat backup. The others, depending on your auto-backup frequency, could be one day or many days old. In addition to the Google Drive cloud backup, WhatsApp stores these backups on your device's local storage.
Open your device's file explorer app (Files by Google is a good option if you don't have one installed), and navigate to /WhatsApp/Databases. Depending on your device, the WhatsApp folder may appear under /sdcard/, /storage/, Internal Memory, or similar.
Within that WhatsApp folder, you'll find the various chat backup files. The latest one is named msgstore.db.crypt12, while the others look like msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.
1.db.crypt12. As you'd expect, YYYY-MM-DD represents the year, month, and date (respectively) that the backup file was created.
To retrieve WhatsApp messages deleted sometime between two backups, simply do the following:
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After this, uninstall WhatsApp. If you've enabled Google Drive cloud backups, open the Google Drive app, slide out the left menu, and select Backups. You'll see a WhatsApp backup file with your phone number in it. Tap the three-dot Menu to the right of this and choose Delete backup to erase it.
Doing this prevents WhatsApp from using the backup file in Google Drive instead of the local file you want to restore.
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Now, reinstall WhatsApp from the Play Store. During the setup process, you'll be prompted to restore from the backup file you've just tweaked—it will show as X days old instead of the most recent backup file. Confirm restoration from this file.
That's all you have to do in order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages from older backups. Once you've restored those messages, feel free to start using WhatsApp as normal again.
When you walk through the above, you'll lose any messages created since the backup you restored. If you only performed that process to restore a few deleted messages, and don't want to lose recent messages, you can export the retrieved chat messages and then restore WhatsApp to the latest backup.
You'll have to run through the entire process again, but it's not difficult.
To export messages, open the chat containing the messages you want to save. Tap the three-dot Menu button at the top-right, followed by More > Export chat. If the chat has media, you'll see an option to export Without media or to Include media.
Including media will add all recent images as attachments, which obviously increases the size of the export file. You can export up to 10,000 messages with media, or 40,000 messages without media.
After you make your choice, choose an app on your phone to share the text file (and attachments, if applicable) containing your messages. You can email this to yourself, add it to cloud storage, or similar. Repeat this for any other chats with messages you want to save.
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Once you're done exporting, follow the steps in the above section again to access your WhatsApp backups.
When you come to renaming the backup files, reverse the process:
Uninstall WhatsApp, delete your Google Drive backup again if needed, and reinstall the app. After you restore from backup, your latest chats will reappear. The messages you exported won't appear inside WhatsApp, but you can at least see them in the text file whenever you need them.
Because you can easily view and edit WhatsApp chat backup files on Android, it's easy to manipulate them. Renaming them allows you to keep as many backup files as you want.
All you need to do is rename a backup in the msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12 format to something else, such as oct11.db.crypt12 or 2021-June-Backup. Because this file doesn't use WhatsApp's naming convention, it's now protected from WhatsApp overwriting it.
Consider creating your own backup file in this way once every month or so. That way, you won't lose tons of messages if you have to restore from an older backup. For even more safety, you should copy these backup files to cloud storage or your computer so that they're safe in case your phone stops working or you lose it.
As you can see, it's fairly easy to recover deleted WhatsApp messages. However, this is only the case if you've backed up your messages ahead of time. This is why the advanced backup strategy is worth setting up if you're an Android user. iPhone owners don't have as many options.
Now that you know you won't lose any WhatsApp messages in the future, it's a good idea to discover some of WhatsApp's other cool features that aren't immediately visible.
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While difficult to do accidentally, WhatsApp users may occasionally delete a conversation. Although there are ways to recover messages from the Facebook-owned app, people may encounter some trouble depending on whether they archived or fully erased their messages.
Express.co.uk has compiled a guide on how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages for both iPhone and Android users.
In order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages, you need to enable Chat Backup in Settings.
WhatsApp offers several backup frequencies in Under Auto Backup: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Off.
Remember, WhatsApp will only retain the most recent backup file in iOS and the two latest backup files in Android.
These daily auto backups make it easy to recover messages soon after deletion.
Weekly auto backups allow you to go further back in time to recover deleted WhatsApp messages from less than seven days ago at the expense of losing recent chat messages.
Simply select the WhatsApp auto backup frequency that best suits your needs.
READ MORE: Sky Glass: 5 things that Sky didn't tell you about its all-new QLED TV
WhatsApp: It is easy to recover deleted WhatsApp messages (Image: Getty)
WhatsApp: Message recovery is easy on both Android and iOS (Image: Getty)
If your WhatsApp chats were archived, iOS users can reverse the archival by giving your iPhone a shake and choose Undo to recover the archived chat.
Even if the chat was archived a while ago, you can still recover them.
In iOS: Scroll up in the chat list until Archived Chats appears.
Tap on it, then swipe left on the chat to restore. Tap Unarchive.
In Android: Tap on Archived chats at the bottom of the chat list.
Tap and hold on the chat you would like to recover, than select the Unarchive icon.
WhatsApp: The chat app offers several backup frequencies under WhatsApp Auto Backup (Image: Getty)
How to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages:Simply uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp. When you reinstall the app, you will be prompted to restore your message history from the backup file.
Select Restore and everything from the latest backup will be restored.
This method of recovering deleted WhatsApp messages works on both Android and iOS but it has to be within your selected auto backup frequency.
Therefore if your auto backup frequency is set to daily, then you can easily recover any deleted chats before the next backup occurs.
WhatsApp: Archived chats can be recovered very easily within WhatsApp (Image: Getty)
Getting deleted messages back after a backup has run is slightly more difficult.
It will depend on your selected auto backup frequency and will only work on Android devices.
Open File Explorer on your device and navigate to WhatsApp and Databases.
WhatsApp: WhatsApp is blocked in only a few coutries (Image: Express)
Rename msgstore.db.crytp12 to msgstore-latest.db.crytp12
Rename msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12 to msgstore.db.crytp12
If Google Drive backups is enabled, open Google Drive, tap on Backups, delete the WhatsApp backup file
Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp, then when prompted, restore from the backup file.
Animated Stickers: Stickers are one of the fastest growing ways people communicate on WhatsApp, with billions sent every day. We are rolling out new animated sticker packs that are even more fun and expressive.
QR codes: We are making it easier than ever to add a new contact. Soon when you meet someone new, you will be able to scan their QR code to add them to your contacts. No more tapping in their digits one at a time.
Dark mode for WhatsApp web and desktop: The incredibly popular Dark Mode theme now extends to your computer.
Improvements to group video calls: With now up to 8 people on a video call, we’ve made it easier to focus on whoever you want by letting you press and hold to maximize a participant's video to full screen. We also added a video icon in group chats of 8 or less, so you can easily start a group video call with 1-tap.
Status comes to KaiOS: KaiOS users can now enjoy the popular feature that lets you share updates that disappear after 24 hours.
..just not yet Saturday, 19th November 2022
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Communication via the Internet is very popular these days - you can easily send a message or make a video call to a person who is on the other side of the globe using the WhatsApp messenger. One of the advantages of WhatsApp is that there is no user fee, you can share files, chat and much more for free. Is it possible to restore whatsapp correspondence if you deleted it? Definitely yes. Don't worry about lost WhatsApp messages on Android.
Check out this article and you will find out 5 effective ways to help you restore chat on Android.
Let's start with the simplest way, for which we do not need to use third-party programs. During the dialogue, you can accidentally delete a message - this happens quite often and there is a solution to this. Your correspondence is saved not only with you, but also with your interlocutor. Therefore, you can ask him to redirect those messages that you have deleted.
To restore WhatsApp correspondence, you must do the following:
Done.
We restored messages very quickly and easily without using additional third-party programs. This method can be applied if your interlocutor has saved your correspondence.
The service offered by Google Drive is very popular among gadget users. You can store data, create and edit documents for free. Also, with Google Drive, you can create backups. If you haven't already, enable this feature: Tap More options > Settings > Chats > Chat backup > Backup to Google Drive
To restore whatsapp android chat, follow these steps:
Is it possible to restore correspondence in WhatsApp? Of course yes. In this method, we will look at how to do this from a Google backup through the official website. In order to recover deleted messages in WhatsApp Android through the official Google website, you need to remember the phone number and Google account that you specified when creating the backup.
This method will help restore your contacts if no more than 30 days have passed since they were deleted.
Perform the following steps:
Make sure you have a file manager. It will be needed in order to rename backups.
Please note that if more than 7 days have passed since the deletion of the correspondence, then it will be impossible to restore the WhatsApp correspondence from the backup.
Consider the method - how to recover deleted WhatsApp Android conversations using a program such as Tenorshare UltData WhatsApp Recovery. It is impossible not to note the advantages of this utility: support for recovering almost all types of WhatsApp Android / iOS data, such as contacts, sms, call history, photos, videos, notes and much more. The program works on many models of Android smartphones, such as Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, LG, Sony, Google. Even if you deleted the correspondence a long time ago, the program will be able to detect and restore it in a matter of minutes. The utility is fully compatible with Android 12/11/10/9/ 8.1/ 8/7/6/5/4.4.
Follow this manual:
Next, you will need to connect your Android device to your PC/Mac using an OEM USB cable.
After that, launch Tenorshare UltData WhatsApp Recovery on your computer. Then, on the main interface of the program, you must click on the "Recover lost data" function.
Then you need to enable USB debugging on your Android device according to the instructions;
After that, the program will detect your Android device and you will be taken to the next screen. Click the "Start" button to find the deleted WhatsApp data on your device;
Sign in to your WhatsApp account on your device. If you have already done so, click the "Yes, I want to continue" button;
Note: To avoid data loss, follow the on-screen instructions to backup WhatsApp;
After Backup, UltData for Android will start scanning WhatsApp data on your device;
After scanning, all WhatsApp data will be displayed, including deleted data. Select the file you want to restore and then click the "Recover" button. Then your deleted messages are restored to your computer.
So, we have successfully restored deleted correspondence in a couple of clicks.
Remote correspondence can create a lot of problems if important data was stored in it. Fortunately, there are ways that can eliminate this unpleasant situation. One of the proven methods is using the Tenorshare UltData WhatsApp Recovery program. The program is able to quickly restore WhatsApp correspondence without backup and root in a matter of minutes. Even if you bought a new smartphone and you need to restore correspondence on Android, then this is not at all difficult to do. Also, if a crash resulted in the deletion of chats, you will be able to restore them. You just need to install the program on your computer and use the built-in instructions to recover data.
WhatsApp is one of the largest instant messengers. Through it, people around the world communicate both at work and on personal matters.
But whatever the subject of conversation, the loss of correspondence is unpleasant. However, this still happens, so it is useful to know what are the ways to recover deleted messages in WhatsApp. Here's how to do it on iPhone.
WhatsApp conversation history is not stored on the servers of the service itself, but you can use the backup copy that the application places in the iCloud cloud to backup and restore the chat history. But you need to understand that in this case it will not be possible to preview the correspondence and select the necessary elements.
Step 1: Enable automatic backup
First of all, you need to make sure that automatic backup is enabled. You can check that this is the case by going to WhatsApp > Settings > Chats > Chat Backup.
Step 2: Restore your chat history
Now uninstall WhatsApp on your iPhone and reinstall it from the App Store, then verify your phone number.
After a successful login, a welcome notification will appear asking you to restore your chat history. Just select the "Restore Chat History" option and the recovery process will begin. When it completes, the number of recovered messages will be displayed.
Tenorshare UltData is a powerful data recovery tool not only for WhatsApp but also for many other types of data. Whether it was lost due to accidental deletion or malware attack, Tenorshare UltData can perfectly recover lost data. In addition, you can recover deleted data both directly from iPhone and from iCloud and iTunes backups.
This tool is compatible with Mac and Windows operating systems and supports more than 20 types of data, including WhatsApp deleted data.
How to Retrieve Deleted WhatsApp Messages on iPhone with Tenorshare UltData:
Step 1. Launch the program
If you don't have UltData, please download and install it on your computer.
Then connect your iPhone with a USB cable. Click "Recover from iOS Device" and let the program detect your iPhone. After a successful discovery, all types of data on your iPhone will be displayed on the screen.
Step 2: Scan
In the list of data types displayed on the screen, select "WhatsApp and attachments". At the bottom of the screen, click the "Start Scan" button.
Step 3: Restore
After the scanning process is completed successfully, the interface will display a list of deleted items. Tick the WhatsApp related options in the left panel (messages and/or attachments) and then view those deleted messages. Select what you want to restore and click the desired Restore button at the bottom of the screen.
This method is suitable for those who regularly back up their iPhone to iTunes. The process of restoring WhatsApp messages from iTunes backups is quite simple, but only the last three backups are available for restoration.
Step 1. Open iTunes and connect your iPhone.
Step 2. Click on the iPhone icon and select the "Restore from Backup" option.
Step 3. Select the backup file containing the desired WhatsApp messages and click "Restore"
Unlike the very first method, here we will talk about restore all iPhone data from iCloud copy. But at the same time, you will need to reset the smartphone and restore all data from the cloud.
The first step is to make sure that these backups are created. To do this, just go to Settings > iCloud > Backup. If iCloud backup is activated, you can recover deleted WhatsApp messages as follows.
Step 1. Go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings.
Step 2. Follow the on-screen instructions until the Apps & Data option appears.
