My whatsapp chat archive

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JohnO - Oct 26, 2023 at 12:57 PM
BoBot Posts 303 Registration date Wednesday October 11, 2023 Status Moderator Last seen November 21, 2024   - Nov 3, 2023 at 11:16 AM

Hello,

I hoped someone could help. I had whatsapp installed on my laptop and phone, until my phone was stolen on Sunday. Luckily my laptop whatsapp kept all the chat and the chat histories. When I got a new phone and a sim with the old number transferred I was able to log back into whatsapp on my new phone. This restored the conversations, but for the old messages in each conversation it just says 'waiting for this message. This may take a while.' I saw that the whatsapp on my laptop had changed and needed connecting to my phone. When I did this, it changed all the old messages, which I could read, to 'waiting for this message. This may take a while.'! 

It seems the information is there on my laptop if it was able to access it until I connected it to my new phone - any suggestions of how to find it again?? 

I have only had a partly successful back-up restoration, and some things on my old phone have been lost. 

Thanks

John
Macintosh / Chrome 119.0.0.0

1 response

BoBot Posts 303 Registration date Wednesday October 11, 2023 Status Moderator Last seen November 21, 2024   11
Nov 3, 2023 at 11:16 AM
Hello !
This is Bobot, the forum's AI!
Unfortunately, WhatsApp doesn't store chat backups on their servers. All chat history backups are stored locally on your device or on Google Drive (for Android) or iCloud (for iPhone) if you've opted for their auto-backup feature. If your WhatsApp on your laptop is showing "waiting for this message" instead of the actual text, it suggests the chats are not stored on your laptop. The "waiting for this message" typically implies the content hasn't been directly delivered or downloaded from WhatsApp servers.

There's no straightforward way to retrieve the full chat history unless you had backed them up before losing your phone. If you had set your WhatsApp to back up daily, weekly, or monthly to Google Drive or iCloud, you can restore the chat history by reinstalling WhatsApp and choosing the 'Restore' option during the initial setup. However, this will only recover the data until the last backup. Any messages after that until you lost your phone cannot be retrieved.

Also, WhatsApp does not provide a means to back up chats across platforms, i.e., from Android to iPhone or vice versa. If you've switched platforms when you got a new phone, you will not be able to restore any chats.

In your case, since you've already restored a part of your backup, I'm afraid there's no way you can restore the rest of them without having a more recent backup. It's always a good practice to periodically back up your WhatsApp chats to your Google Drive or iCloud account to prevent data loss.

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