TechTips: How to retrieve deleted messages on WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging application that allows smartphone users to exchange text, image, video and audio messages for free. It boasts of having 1.5 billion regular users and enables these users to send, archive, star and delete messages.

Here are ways to retrieve messages that were previously deleted on WhatsApp:

Restore WhatsApp Data from Google Drive Backup

If you have back up your WhatsApp messages with Google Drive before, you can retrieve deleted messages on WhatsApp via the backup copy.

– Uninstall the WhatsApp on your device.

– Reinstall it and sign in your account.

– There would be prompted with a message to restore your backup after you open the reinstalled WhatsApp. Please tap “Restore”. And the job is done!

NOTE: If you never back up before, you are not able to restore the data when accidentally delete. Also, it doesn’t allow you to select recover the data selectively and you need to restore the whole files on the backup copy, even some of them are useless.

Restoring from a local file

If you didn’t connect a Google Drive account to Whatsapp, there is another way: to restore messages from a local file. Here’s how to retrieve deleted WhatsApp chat history from a local file:
– Open the SDcard/WhatsApp/databases folder in the file manager. All chat backups are stored there. If there are no files, check the main storage also.
– Select the file you want to restore from the list. (the format should be msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12.) Rename it to msgstore.db.crypt12.

– Uninstall WhatsApp from your phone (if it is still on the phone) and reinstall it again by downloading the latest version from Google Play.
– Specify the phone number you’ve used before during installing,
– In the “Restore chat history” window click “Restore” in order to import old chats and get back deleted WhatsApp messages.