Recovering Recent Chats
Touchscreen devices are great, but can also
be frustrating. A simple tap on the wrong
option, for example, and your WhatsApp
chat history is gone.
You meant to hit Add a conversation
shortcut, but instead you tapped Delete chat.
Then you clicked “Yes” without thinking!
whatsapp chat delete Accidentally
Deleted Your WhatsApp Chat
History? Heres How To Get It Back
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Your chats are gone now. leaving you
without a record. How do you get them
back?
Recovering Recent Chats
It’s surprisingly simple to recover anything
less than seven days old: just uninstall the
app, then reinstall it. WhatsApp automatically
creates a backup of your data everyday at 4
am system time, and this data is stored on
the SD card of your Android phone. When
you re-install the app, you are prompted to
restore your message history. Simply tap
Restore and everything less than seven days
old is restored.
whatsapp reinstall
Accidentally Deleted Your
WhatsApp Chat History? Heres
How To Get It Back
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Done.
Recovering Older Chats
Chats older than seven days old are slightly
more difficult to restore. Here are two
methods, one manual and another using a
web app designed for the job.
Method One: Manually
Navigate to the Database folder in the SD
card – the exact route is /sdcard/WhatsApp/
Databases. In the Databases folder you will
see several files: the chat files. You will
notice that they are saved with names like
“msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt” where
“YYYY-MM-DD” is the year, month and date
respectively. (For more information on how
to browse Android folders, please read our
Android Guide).
whatsapp recover messages
Accidentally Deleted Your WhatsApp
Chat History? Heres How To Get It
Back
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First, rename “msgstore.db.crypt”, adding
“OLD” or something similar to the filename.
Then check out the files below: should be
several files marked with different dates.
Select the file that you want to restore – find
a file from before you accidentally deleted
everything – and rename it
“msgstore.db.crypt”.
Back to your Android device: uninstall and
re-install WhatsApp. Choose Restore when
prompted. The chat file saved as
“msgstore.db.crypt” is restored and voilà,
your old messages are restored.
Take note that restoring an earlier chat file
will delete your current chat history, and
there’s no simple way to merge your new
message with your old, recovered messages.
You can restore your new messages by
repeating the process above, replacing your
new msgstore.db.crypt with the “OLD” one.
Method Two: Using A Third Party Service
The second method is much faster, and
involves using a free service known as
Recover Messages. This free online service
reads the contents of the database file and
extracts the messages. Simply visit the
website and select the database file from
the SD card location on your Android phone,
accept the terms of use and click Scan.
recover messages website
Accidentally Deleted Your WhatsApp
Chat History? Heres How To Get It
Back
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Depending on the size of your file, the
process may take anywhere from a few
seconds to several minutes. After the scan is
complete, read your messages by clicking
the tab labeled “Registers Recovered”. While
this method is much simpler, you can only
extract and read your old chats but you
cannot restore them back to your WhatsApp
chat history.
whatsapp recovered messages
Accidentally Deleted Your WhatsApp
Chat History? Heres How To Get It
Back
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Locating Deleted Images, Video & Audio
It may come as a surprise, but when you
delete images and video from your
WhatsApp chat history they aren’t really
erased until you delete them. Locating
WhatsApp images and video that you have
deleted from the chat history is therefore
fairly easy. On your phone, go to File
Manager and in the WhatsApp folder open
the Audio, Images or Video folder
depending on the media you are trying to
locate. Scroll through the list to find the file.
You can also do this on your computer by
connecting your phone via a USB cable and
browsing the WhatsApp folders as shown in
the screen shot below.
whatsapp deleted media
Accidentally Deleted Your WhatsApp
Chat History? Heres How To Get It
Back
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You should find everything here.
If you are new to WhatsApp, I recommend
this review by Erez Zuckerman that details
some of the great features.
Oh, and accidental deletion of messages is a
common problem across all messaging
platforms – not just WhatsApp. Tina’s post
onHow to recover deleted mails in
Thunderbird shows that, and I’m sure there
are other examples. Have you ever deleted
important chats and media accidentally, and
what did you do about it? Share your
experiences with us in the comments below.