At some point, we need to get access to our old Facebook messages, but when we begin to search for them, we realize that they’re not available or they are completely deleted from our account. It’s really annoying because sometimes you want to use these messages for reference or you even want to use as evidence.

Sometimes you might delete the messages by accident and want to restore them, whatever reason you have, there are always solutions for you.

In this post, we’ll outline all the possible solutions to recover permanently deleted messages on Facebook. We’ll share some important tips that will ensure your messages are backed up and are sent to through other channels to give you access whenever you need them.

First, we’ll share some simple tips that will help you restore the messages with ease without the need for any tool or following a lengthy process.

How To Restore Deleted Messages Fast

Check whether the message is permanently deleted

We know you wouldn’t consider this as a solution but believe it or not, sometimes the message isn’t actually deleted, it’s just that you’ve missed spotting the message in your conversations. This is highly recommended especially if you know that you haven’t deleted the message right from the first place.

We understand that sometimes messages get deleted by accident, but it’s not that easy because you’ll be prompted to confirm before deleting any message on Facebook. Because of this, we recommend you cross-check again, if possible load as many messages as you can on your feed or profile, and then hit ‘control F’ and search for a word or phrase you’ve mentioned in the message.

Most browsers it’s ‘Control F’ for the search box to appear so that you can search for words displayed on any page if you haven’t found your message move on to the next step.

Ask for a copy from the recipient

This is another simple solution that will help you recover deleted messages on Facebook even if you’ve deleted them permanently. Whenever you delete a message, it’s only removed from your account. The receiver will still have a copy of the message if he hasn’t deleted the message from his own side.

They can send you a copy of the message by copying and pasting on a notepad or any text editor. They can also take a screenshot and forward it to you via Facebook messenger, Email or Whatsapp. Reference the month and year you’ve sent the message so that they can easily track the message from their side.

Look for your message in archived Threads

Sometimes you haven’t deleted the messages, you archived them. You should always send messages to archive rather than deleting them, it’s really easy to recover them when the need arises. Facebook gives users two options when it comes to removing messages, you can either delete a chat or you can send to archive.

So in order to look for the messages in the archive folder, got to archived threads by clicking on the gear-shaped icon, which will take you to settings, from the list of items you’ll see the option ‘Archived Threads’. Take note that you can set to send all chats to archive, doesn’t necessarily have to be whenever you’re deleting a single message.

Check email notifications

By default, all received chats will be forwarded to your email address, SMS notifications can also be sent. I know it’s hard to keep messages you received through SMS for long and most users are not comfortable with this option since there might be charges. If email notifications have been sent, you can recover your chats with ease.

And the good part is that you just need to search the sender’s name and all chats with his name will be displayed, but this option is applicable if you’re receiving the message when you send a message, notifications won’t be sent to your email.

You should always set email notifications if you haven’t done so, it comes with a lot of benefits when it comes to recovering messages either from chats or posts notifications from users and groups. Even if your Facebook account got terminated, you can still access your messages from email.

So these are the simple solutions that will help you recover your lost chat on Facebook, now we’ll move on to talk about restoring messages when they’re permanently deleted. First, we need to answer the question of whether it’s possible to recover permanently deleted messages or not?

Can You Recover Permanently Deleted Messages On Facebook?

Unfortunately, you cannot recover permanently deleted messages on Facebook, you can only recover your messages if you archive them. Here is a screenshot from the answer provided by Facebook;

Can You Recover Permanently Deleted Messages On Facebook?

But you can, however, backup your messages and we’ll share how to do that later in this post, this will allow you to recover messages you permanently delete on Facebook with ease.

You should understand that because deleting chats is permanent, you’re prompted to confirm when you attempt to permanently delete the message. Here is a screenshot;

The process is irreversible and can’t be undone, and this is official from Facebook.

What About Third-Party Apps, Can They Restore Deleted Messages?

The answer to these questions is yes and no. Almost all the apps that promise to restore your messages are using backup, this means you won’t have access to messages deleted before installing the app, if any app can recover the deleted messages, it’s definitely showing messages that are in the archive threads and you already have access to that from your account.

So if an app can back up your Facebook message data, you can restore your messages even after deleting them permanently from Facebook.

But on the other hand, if you deleted your messages months or years before installing the app, there is no way you can recover them. If the app does so, it means the message isn’t permanently deleted from your account, you just couldn’t trace the message.

One thing these apps do is that they can organize your messages in a way they’re easier to find, and can also back up your Facebook Posts, you just need to set the app to store every message on Facebook and it’ll take care of everything.

There are thousands of apps in google play, and they all promise to recover deleted messages, but that’s only subject to if the app is already installed on your phone or computer before you delete the messages. And also you need to select the right settings to do so, you should set backup automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

But generally from my own opinion, these apps aren’t worth it because you can backup your data efficiently on your pc or phone. You can download your Facebook data at any given time and save it to your computer.

These include not only chats but also Facebook posts, even messages in the archive can be downloaded on your Pc or any mobile device with ease. But you have to be doing this frequently, whenever you download new data, you can delete the old data from your device. You can also choose time frames so that you can only download data for a specified date.

What Happens To Hidden Messages You Haven’t Delete?

All hidden messages are sent directly to the Archive, if you’re sure you haven’t deleted a message and you can’t seem to find it, you should check the archive thread, as long as you don’t delete a message, it’s definitely in the archive.

Let’s share how to backup your Facebook data so that even if you’ve deleted the data from your Facebook account it can be accessible.

Backing Up Your Facebook Chats And Messages

• For desktop users, you should log in to your account using your favourite browser.
• After login, you should click on Menu/settings.

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Messages on Facebook

• You’ll see the option ‘Your Facebook Information/Download/Download Your Information.
• With this option, you can download your entire Facebook data including chats and messages, and also any other activity like comments and more. So for this one, you need to select only messages and ignore downloading any data.

You can also select to download data from a particular date, this will make the process fast, unlike when you’re downloading the whole data that can take some minutes to hours, it will take longer if you shared a lot of images and video content on your profile.

• Once you select the time frame, you now select the format you want to export your data, you have two options here, HTML and JSON file. HTML will be preferable since it allows you to view the data on most devices, you can even view directly with your browser.
• One thing to note is that even if you choose to download data from a particular date, before creating the download file you can select the data you don’t want, after removing the data you don’t want to include, you can click on ‘Create File’ button.
• The data will be sent to your email address; this is the email address you’ve added on your Facebook account.
• Once you click the link your email, you’ll be directed to a page with the download button.
• Once you open the file, the data will be displayed as an archive holding folder, and the chats you’ve received so far on Facebook messenger.

• The inbox folder contains names of all people you send messages on Facebook Messenger and also Facebook users that send you messages.
• You’ll also notice the file name ‘Message.html’ when you double click on this file it will automatically open in your default browser. Here you’ll be able to read all the messages in order.

Restoring Deleted Messages On Android

If you’re on phone and you’re using the Facebook Messenger app, you have to archive them in order to get a chance of restoring the messages. Here are the steps to follow;

• Open your Facebook Messenger app that’s on your phone or any mobile device.
• Tap on recent conversations.
• When the conversations open, there would be a search bar, your search for the message you’re looking for. this is better than going through all the archived messages to trace the chat you’re looking for.
• Once the message shows up, you should select the message and tap ‘unarchive message’ option. This will unarchive the message and it will now appear on your chats.

So we’ve been talking about how to send chats to archive instead of deleting them, but haven’t outlined how to do that, let’s share how to do that as well.

How To Archive Facebook Messages

• Open Facebook Messenger app on your mobile device.
• Tap on ‘recent conversation’ where all your conversations are listed, select the messages you want to send to archive. Long press on the select message and tap on the three horizontal lines, you’ll see the option ‘Archive’.
• This will remove the selected conversation from the conversations menu and will be moved to the archive folder. This means the messages aren’t deleted, they’re only moved to another folder where you can recover them whenever you need.

This what you should do for any message you don’t want to appear in your conversations list.

Recover Deleted Messages On Facebook On Android Using Your PC

If you tried to recover your archived messages using the method mentioned above or you just want to connect your Pc and get the messages, you can do so. This is possible because all data is stored on your Storage/SD Card. Here is how to do that;

• Connect your phone to PC using a USB cable.
• Locate the phone by going to your hard drive, double click on it and your all folders in your phone will be listed.
• Click on ‘Android’, then ‘Data’ and search for a folder named ‘com.facebook.orca.
• Open the folder, and click ‘Find cache’, fb_temp’ and locate your messages.

Recover Deleted Messages Using Third-Party Apps

As mentioned earlier, what these apps do all the time, is to back up your data, so that after deleting messages you can recover them easily. One of such apps you can use is Stellar data recovery for android, there are a lot of options available out there, including free ones. Just search on Play Store and you’ll have enough options to choose from.

Once you install the app, install it and make the right settings, most of these apps are self-explanatory, they’ll walk you through how to set up the backup process.

That’s it for this post, let us know in the comment box below if you have another method that can help Facebook users restore permanently deleted messages from their FB account.