Hello everybody!
This video will show you how to restore chat history and contacts as well as sent or received
files and images in WhatsApp messenger on Android.
WhatsApp users face the need to recover data when they change from one smartphone to another,
when they accidentally delete one or all of their chats, when the smartphone memory is
reset or the memory card is formatted, after the application failure and so on.
Let’s see how to return all this data.
Let’s start with the simplest things.
In order to recover messages which are less than 7 days old, you just need to reinstall
the application on your mobile device: first, uninstall it, then reinstall it again.
WhatsApp automatically creates a backup of your data every day and saves it to your smartphone’s
memory card.
By default, such backup copy is created every day at 2 am.
After reinstallation, the application will suggest you to restore chat history from a
previously created backup copy.
Just tap on “Restore” and data for the last 7 days will be recovered automatically.
The messenger will do the same when it detects a manually created backup copy of all chats
and media files of your account.
How can we create it?
To create a WhatsApp chat and media file backup copy:
• Start the messenger.
• Go to Settings / Chat / Chat backup.
• You will see a green “Back Up” button.
• By tapping on it you will create a backup copy of all WhatsApp chats and media files
on your device.
• The copy will be created in two locations: in your device memory and in your Google Drive.
Yet it works only if the device is synced with your Google account.
• You can set up how often the backup copy is created in Google Drive.
Tap the line “Backup to Google Drive” and select how often you want to create backups.
• Having entered Google Drive (it doesn’t matter if you get there from your smartphone
or PC), you will find your Backup in the Backups menu.
Now when you reinstall WhatsApp on this device, the messenger will detect the latest backup
and will suggest restoring history from there.
When you change your device, sync it to your Google account and install the Google Drive
application.
When being installed, WhatsApp will suggest restoring history from the backup sent to
Google Drive.
In this way, there is no problem transferring WhatsApp history from one device to another,
if you want to replace your old smartphone.
What should you do if there is no backup copy?
Restoring chats older than 7 days without having a manually created backup copy is a
more difficult task.
To do it, go to the folder on your device’s memory where WhatsApp saves user chat backups.
By default, this folder is: WhatsApp/Databases.
If you go to that folder, you will find a file with the name msgstore.db.crypt12 there,
and several more files with names like msgstore-2018-01-10.1.db.crypt12.
msgstore.db.crypt12 is the file with the latest WhatsApp chat backup.
This is the file used for automatic chat and contact recovery after reinstallation of WhatsApp.
msgstore-2018-01-10.1.db.crypt12 is a backup copy of the application’s chats for a certain
date which is given in the file name.
In our case, this is a chat backup copy dated somewhere in January 2018.
That is why, when you need to restore chats as they were on a certain date, find a file
which contains this date in its name, and rename such file into msgstore.db.crypt12.
After that, delete WhatsApp from your device and reinstall it.
During the installation, the program will suggest recovering the chat and contact backup
copy which it has found, in the way that we described in the previous part of the article.
Recover it, and the chat history from the previously renamed file will be restored.
Yet, bear in mind that current chat history will be deleted from your device as the result
of this procedure.
I mean the chats which were created after the backup which is being restored.
Some more stuff: If you create a chat backup manually, it is also saved to the file with
the name msgstore.db.crypt12.
That is why you should rename the chat backup file which you have created manually and save
it to a convenient location, so that you do not lose it.
When it is necessary to recover chats just from this file, rename the file back into
msgstore.db.crypt12.
I have already said that you can transfer WhatsApp chat history to a new smartphone
using a backup stored in Google Drive.
You can also do it by transferring files from the folder WhatsApp/Databases . You can use
this method if your old device is not synced with your Google account, and so you can’t
create a backup in Google Drive.
If you have replaced your smartphone with a new one and you need to recover chat history
from the old device there, transfer files from the folder WhatsApp/Databases of your
old phone to your new device.
During WhatsApp installation, the application will find the chat backup copy and will suggest
restoring it.
Recovering images, videos or audio files deleted from WhatsApp
All files (images, videos, audio files, documents etc) sent or received with the use of WhatsApp
are saved into the folder /WhatsApp/Media.
If your device has Internal Memory, the WhatsApp folder will be there.
If there is no Internal Memory, this folder will be on your memory card.
If such files are deleted from the chat, they are still kept in that folder.
You can just go to WhatsApp/Media, and open the folder corresponding to the type of the
file you are looking for.
If you need to recover deleted images, videos or audio files from WhatsApp chats on an Android
smartphone or tablet PC, you can use one of the ways that I described in my previous video
about recovering photos and videos from an Android device.
I will leave the link in the description: That is all for now.
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Thank you for watching.
Good luck.