How to recover deleted messages from Facebook’s Messenger app

This quick guide will explain how to recover deleted messages as a follow-up to our prior piece on how to delete messages from Facebook’s or rather Meta’s Messenger application. If you or a family member unintentionally deleted messages from the Meta Messenger app, the ideas that follow will explain how to recover them, depending on how long it has been since the initial message was deleted. Even if it is sometimes possible to recover deleted messages, it is not always the case.

Verify that this is the case if you accidentally delete a message from the Messenger app and instead mistakenly transfer it to the app’s message archive rather than completely deleting it. Even if there is a little chance, it could be useful to double-check since it is rather easy to make a mistake, and doing so might save you a lot of trouble. It is easy to achieve by unintentionally moving your finger over a conversation. The choices “Archive” and “More” will afterwards become accessible. By choosing more, you may decide which messages to permanently delete.

Recover deleted messages from Messenger

To go through the Messenger app archive for communications that may have been inadvertently stored and to retrieve deleted messages:

1. On your phone or tablet, open the Messenger app and choose your profile picture.
2. After seeing your profile, choose the “Archived Chats” option from the list.
3. Every single one of your stored messages will be visible and easily recoverable if they were unintentionally relocated or destroyed.
4. Drag your finger from right to left over a message to make it unarchived. The “Unarchive” option will afterwards appear. You may return the message to your current conversations by selecting this and retrieving it.

You may perform the recovery process using a browser on a PC or laptop by opening the aforementioned browser and navigating to the Meta webpage on the official Facebook website.

1. Log into Facebook or Meta by just opening the website in your browser.
2. Next, choose the “Messenger” button located in the top-right corner of the page.
3. Click the link that reads, “See All in Messenger” at the bottom of the list of all of your talks.
4. Click the “…” button with three dots at the top of the main conversation list while you are in the Chats window.
5. After that, a new menu will appear, with an option for “Archived Chats” located around halfway down. Pick this.
6. From a thorough list of all your archived messages, choose the chat to respond to and restore it to Messenger’s list of active conversations.

If you search your archive and still can’t discover the deleted email. You’ll be glad to know that Facebook stores deleted messages so you may access them again. They do not indicate how long they will keep deleted conversations, just that they will keep them until they are destroyed completely.

The last way to get back lost Messenger messages is to download your Facebook data before it vanishes entirely from the server. To accomplish this, you may ask for a copy of all of your data stored on Facebook and the Meta website, or, if that’s not possible, only the deleted messages. Though it’s a long shot, it’s possible that one of these backups contains the deleted message you’re trying to find in the Messenger app. Send a request to Facebook for your profile image using iOS:

IOS Messenger data recovery

1. Open the Messenger app, then choose your profile photo from the list at the top of the screen.
2. Doing so will open your profile page, from which you may access your “Account Settings” by clicking on a link towards the bottom.
3. The “Download Profile Information” button is located on the account settings page. Select this, then select “Messages” from the list of fresh options that appears.
4. If you do not want to download every piece of information from your Facebook Messenger app, uncheck any more choices.
5. After that, choose “Create File” at the page’s bottom. This will request that your data be exported to the servers, and the status of the file will change to “Pending.”
6. You may examine the contents of the file export after it’s done if your deleted messages are still retrievable and haven’t been wiped forever by Facebook.

Using a browser

If using a browser, you should download the data for the Facebook Messenger app:

1. Open your preferred browser and go to the Facebook website once again.
2. In the top right corner of your browser window, choose “Settings and Privacy” from the drop-down menu.
3. The “Settings” button located at the top of the privacy and settings section.
4. Select the “Privacy” option on the next window’s right side.
5. In the box labelled “Privacy,” click “Your Facebook Information.”
6. Under the centre of your browser, in the “Download Profile Information” box, click “View.”
7. After selecting “Messages,” eliminate anything you don’t want to download to speed up the export procedure.
8. Once all of your options have been selected, click the blue “Create File” button that is placed above the check boxes in the centre of the right side of the screen.
9. Once Facebook alerts you that the export of your deleted messages has been completed, you may open the file to retrieve the deleted Messenger app conversation or topic.

If you are still experiencing difficulties trying to recover deleted messages using the Messenger software, it is always worth contacting the official Facebook support team to see if they can help you. Before the servers quickly delete them forever.