How to Retrieve Deleted Facebook Messages

How to Retrieve Deleted Facebook Messages – This page will teach you how to find a copy of your Facebook messages elsewhere, as well as how to prevent message losses in the future as there is no way to retrieve a Facebook message or conversation that you’ve already deleted—once you choose to delete a message, it’s gone from your side of the conversation for good.

How to Retrieve Deleted Facebook Messages

1. Backing up Messages to Your Email

Open Facebook. Go to https://www.facebook.com/ in your computer’s web browser. This will open your Facebook News Feed if you’re logged in.
If you aren’t logged in, enter your Facebook email address and password, then click Log In.
Click the “Menu” icon. You’ll find this in the top-right corner of the Facebook page.
Clicking it prompts a drop-down menu. For some users, this icon will resemble a gear instead.
Click Settings. It’s in the drop-down menu. Doing so opens the Settings page.
Click Notifications. This tab is on the left side of the page.
Click Email. It’s near the top of the page. Clicking this box will expand the “Email” section.
Enable message backup. Check the box to the left of the “All notifications, except the ones you unsubscribe from” in the “WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE” section. This will ensure that any messages you receive are copied to your email inbox, though it will also enable email notifications for all other Facebook activity.

You can unsubscribe from non-message notifications by opening a notification’s email and clicking Unsubscribe at the bottom of the email.

2. Looking in Other Locations

Understand the difference between messages and conversations. “Messages” are specific lines of text (or photos, videos, links, etc.) inside of a conversation between you and at least one other person, while “conversations” are entire records of messages between you and your recipient(s).

If you think you’ve deleted specific messages from a conversation, finding them may prove time-consuming. Looking for conversations which you think you deleted is much easier.
Open Facebook Messenger: Go to https://www.facebook.com/messages in your computer’s web browser. This will open your most recent Facebook message in Messenger if you’re logged into Facebook.
If you aren’t logged into Facebook, you’ll be prompted to enter your Facebook email address and password before proceeding.
Make sure you actually deleted the conversation: Before you embark on a mission to find (or mourn) your lost messages, scroll through your Facebook Messenger inbox and look for the conversation which you think you deleted. There’s always a chance that your conversation just got buried under several newer ones.
Ask message recipients for a copy of the messages: If you did delete your side of the conversation (or specific messages), you can always ask the person (or people) on the other side of the message for screenshots or copies of the conversation. As long as they haven’t deleted the conversation/messages, you should be able to obtain it from them.
You can have your message recipient download a copy of the messages and send the file to you.
Check your archived conversations: There’s always a chance that you archived the conversation you’re looking for rather than deleted it.

To check for archived conversations, do the following:

Click the gear-shaped icon in the top-left corner of Messenger.
Click Archived Threads in the drop-down menu.
Review any archived conversations.
You cannot archive individual messages.

Related: How to Delete Old Posts On Facebook

Determine whether your conversations were sent to your email: If you have all email notifications enabled for your account, you should receive copies of messages in your inbox.

You can check on this by doing the following:

Click the “Menu” icon in the top-right side of the Facebook page.
Click Settings in the drop-down menu.
Click the Notifications tab.
Click Email to expand it.

Look to see if the “All notifications, except the ones you unsubscribe from” box in the “WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE” section is checked. If it isn’t, your messages weren’t backed up to your email address.

Check your email’s “Trash” folder. If your conversations were backed up to your email address but you can’t find them, try clicking the Trash folder and browsing for them there.
Most email providers delete emails after a certain amount of time (e.g., 30 days), so your messages still may be gone.