2 Proven Ways to Recover deleted WhatsApp messages

Recovering deleted WhatsApp messages might be as crucial as finding your lost documents because a single chat history can be as influential in the way that it can give you a greater life.  

Whenever you lose any of your WhatsApp messages regardless of their importance or quantity, rest assured that you can recover them back because WhatsApp has already prepared a backup for you.

What may happen to be the reason for us to want to recover deleted WhatsApp messages can be: 

• If your phone has been stolen or misplaced. 
• If you accidentally deleted WhatsApp messages. 
• You deleted a threatening message that you want to present in court as evidence. 
• If you want to switch to another phone. 
• When you want to do a factory reset to erase your phone. 
• If you or someone accidentally removed WhatsApp from your phone. 
• Change your mobile phone and wanted to transfer your WhatsApp from your old mobile phone to a new one. 

For those reasons WhatsApp has laid out a convenient way through which a user can restore his deleted WhatsApp chats. 

Also Read: 

• How to know if someone blocked you on WhatsApp 
• How to make WhatsApp group call 
• How to Read WhatsApp messages without letting the sender knowing 
  
• How to Check who has read your message in WhatsApp group
  

Fortunately, we have two effective methods that guarantee the recovery of deleted WhatsApp messages. 

The first method works only if you enabled a backup of your WhatsApp messages in Google Drive before missing them. 

The second method works for every WhatsApp, even if the user did not set a backup before. 

In a nutshell, all deleted WhatsApp messages could be recovered either by using Google Drive backup or the phone's local storage backup. 

Without wasting time, let's dive into the topic to see how to recover deleted WhatsApp chat history. 

How to recover deleted WhatsApp messages from Google Drive 

Google Drive is a mobile app that allows a user to save important documents including WhatsApp chats for further access. 

All Android phones usually come with the Google Drive app installed, check if it's not available on your phone you can download it from the Play store. 

In your WhatsApp settings, there is an option for you to back up all your chat history into Google Drive. If you enabled this feature all your WhatsApp messages (including media files) will be copied to Drive so that you can get them back in case you accidentally lost them or you switched to another phone. 

Before we proceed with the backup process, let me introduce you how to enable Google Drive backup in your WhatsApp settings. 

How to enable Auto backup of your WhatsApp chats 

Before using Google drive to back up your messages, you must have a Google account linked to your phone. Yet, if you don't create your Google account before, you can check out here to learn how to create it in a short time. 

If you already linked your phone to your Google account and have downloaded the Google Drive app, it is okay then...

• Open your WhatsApp and head to <settings>. 
• Tap on <Chats>, then scroll down to <Chat Back up> and click on it. 
• Toggle on "include videos" if you want to involve WhatsApp videos in the backup. 
• Select the Google account you want to use in the backup. 
• Select the backup frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)
• Permit WhatsApp to backup to Google Drive. 
• Once you are done, every new message you send or received will be automatically copied into your Drive depending on the time-frequency you choose. 

Now that you enabled this feature. Let's assume that you accidentally deleted some of the most important messages, or you uninstall the WhatsApp app from your phone or you switched to a new phone. Follow these simple steps to learn how to restore it. 

Step 1: Remove WhatsApp from your phone

If you are going to restore deleted WhatsApp chats from the same phone you are using without switching to another phone, then you have to remove WhatsApp from your phone and re-install it. 

On the other hand, if you use another phone to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages you'll need to link it with the Google account used to create a backup. It's enough if you signed in to one of the Google products like Gmail, Play store, YouTube, etc. 

Step 2: Re-install the WhatsApp app

After re-installing a new WhatsApp, open it and use the same phone number that you used in the previous WhatsApp. 

Once you confirm your number, you'll see an onscreen message noticing that a backup found from Google Drive. 

Step 3: Restore Discovered messages 

If you want to retrieve your deleted chat history click "Restore", meanwhile if you click on "Skip" your chats won't be retrieved. 

By clicking on "Restore" all your old messages will be revived back to their normal positions. 

Point of interruptions

Someone might ask "I have not previously backup my chats in Google Drive how can I recover them?" I would like to say this is possible because WhatsApp has already been doing a favor for you, it stores your WhatsApp messages in your phone's local storage. Head over to the next title to learn the answer in detail. 

How to Restore deleted WhatsApp messages without backup 

WhatsApp normally backup the messages for the 7 most recent days. In normal circumstances, if you re-install a WhatsApp, firstly it will look for Google Drive backup, if not available then it will take the most recent backup in your phone storage and bring it for restoration. But this only recovers the backup that was found on that recent date. 

However, if you want your recovery to include the oldest messages back, you have to do some changes as follows: 

Open your file explorer (phone storage) and find the WhatsApp folder. If you can't see it check in the external storage. 

Open the WhatsApp folder, you will see some sub-folders, just find the Database folder and open it. 

Inside the database folder, there are seven most recent backups, all six have a date but the last one has not. They look like msgstore-2023-03-14.1.db.crypt14

Now we want to rename one of them and give it the same name as the last one. 

But to avoid overwriting we have to rename the last one to another name, but we will not delete anything in its original name, we just add some letters to it. For example, if the last one is named msgstore.crypt14  then you can rename it like  msgstore-LATEST.db.crypt14 

Now take one out of the rest and rename it with msgstore.crypt14 (you just remove the date from it).

After doing the above process, follow these steps to complete restoring your chats. 

Step 1: Re-install the WhatsApp app

If the backup is on the same phone, you have to uninstall WhatsApp from the phone and re-install it. 

But in the case, you want to back up your chats to the new phone you have to transfer the backup files from the old phone's local storage to the new one's storage. 

You can use any transfer method like Bluetooth sharing or copying with the aid of a USB flash drive. 

To do so, open the old phone's file explorer > open the WhatsApp folder > open the database folder and copy the whole files to the new phone. 

Step 2: In both cases, after re-installing the new WhatsApp, use the same phone number that you used in the previous WhatsApp. 

Once you confirm your number,  you'll see an onscreen message noticing that a backup found from the phone's internal storage. Tap restore to retrieve your old WhatsApp messages. 

Conclusion

Deleting your WhatsApp messages doesn't mean you never get them back. If you happen to be for any reason missed your WhatsApp message, read this article carefully, you will learn how you'll recover deleted WhatsApp messages in no time. If you find anything incomprehensible feel free to inquire in the comments section.

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