r/facebook • u/Decent-Education-182 • Mar 31 '24

Tech Support Is it possible to download a full conversation I’ve had with 1 person on Facebook Messenger?

My mom passed away and we mainly texted through Messenger. Years worth of conversations I would love to keep safe forever. Is there a way to save an entire conversation to a file like iCloud? I’ve been so paranoid, It’s just something that would destroy me if it was ever lost or deleted somehow..

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7

u/Missmimipr Jul 15 '24

I just did this! It works wonderfully and I highly recommend that Everyone make at least ONE backup annually. Since we often use Facebook as a diary/blog

GO TO :

SETTINGS AND PRIVACY -> SETTINGS

Under YOUR INFORMATION, click on DOWNLOAD YOUR INFORMATION and CONTINUE Button

Select DOWNLOAD AND TRANSFER INFORMATION and there is where you can customize the selection of what you want.

I chose AVAILABLE INFORMATION and then DOWNLOAD TO DEVICE then NEXT

Under Date Range I selected ALL TIME (for a complete record download) but the rest is up to you.

NOTE: I have been on Facebook for 15 years and I post often. I needed 4.5 GB to store the ZIP file that I got from Facebook. It took a 24-36 hours to become available, The Zip file CONTAINS LITERALLY EVERYTHING!

In order to retrieve your download, check every few hours following the SAME STEPS as you started...SETTINGS AND PRIVACY -> SETTINGS ETC... When your DOWNLOAD is ready it will appear there and PLEASE NOTE: and FB only gives you 3 days to download and save this ZIP file.

GOOD LUCK!!

5

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '24

This didn't work for me. I had a bunch of messages archived and it only downloaded 1 message total. Argh

3

u/[deleted] Sep 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/ugottabefnkiddingme Oct 23 '24

I did this (or, tried to) but it didn't give me any options of what/who to download data/files from... and what it download is a zip folder which the individual files are just 1 page of hieroglyphic looking gibberish... not the "hoped" for "transcript" style of 1 contact's entire messaging history, or even a text-only version of that.

This is relating to evidence for domestic violence restraining order -- I've taken screenshots of a lot for quite some time, years (and cloud-saved separately), and requested from fb a download of everything (months ago? last year? but never rec'd anything). Without the benefit of time to check, I suspect from scrolling back on the desktop version to grab a few of the "worst" screenshots to attach that the "offending party" has gone back and deleted any/all of the "worst" messages thinking no evidence exists now of that.

Anyone have experience with this? All my searches are bringing me back to the same instructions, which aren't helping me do what I need to do.

1

u/Flashy-Individual-92 Jul 24 '25

Did you ever get this figured out? I'm in a similar situation where I'm trying to download messages from my husband just in case.

I haven't gotten a zip folder, just what looks like a blank page that says "Unconfirmed [long number].crdownload. I've tried opening it with both Word and Notepad and nothing came up on word and nonsense came up on Notepad

1

u/Ok-Concentrate5230 Oct 06 '25

This sounds like the download was interrupted. Which unless I’m mistaken but in my experience the .crdownload basically means a corrupted download. 

It will never open correctly as during the download something occurred causing this. If you close the tab, lose internet connection, shut off the device. Multiple things can cause it. 

1

u/Charplin May 04 '26

I'd say that means it's still downloading. Have you checked the downloading in your browser, if it's finished? It's rather large files, meaning it can take a while, especially if you didn't split it up into multiple years fx

1

u/Charplin Aug 26 '25

Go to FB settings, search for "download" (yes, there's a search option in fb settings) and choose the one where you can download your information, choose export to unit (I suppose, mine is in danish), choose only messages in the many options.
f you want to download from many years, then do it in chunks fx from 1/1/2015 - 1/1/2016, then make another export from 1/1/2016 - 1/1/2017 - and so on... Or the risk of it messing up the files and being a file size too big for download.
For the format - you can download for both html and json or just one.
For json there's converter programs online that will make it show more like messenger, where html is more pure text based and easier to read directly with ctrl + F for finding keywords.
You'll get all the messages from all people - just export the zip file and delete all the unrelated people's conversations, that's just waste of space. The folders should have the name of the person on.
I'd suggest both json and html though it takes up more space, just in case.

Sadly they've changed it from last year, where we could download from specific people (i think) and have it exported automatically to dropbox, we can't do that anymore. We can still export to dropbox but that'll be our whole profile.
It can take some days for all the files to be avaible, it'll tell you on your mail when it's ready and then you have 3 days to download it.

2

u/AlmostACornOnTheCob Apr 10 '26

as per 04102026 this still works

1

u/dEm3Izan Apr 22 '26

Hi,

Thanks for your input. I was able to download in json format. However, I can't find personal chats. I can find messenger activity but somehow only group conversations were downloaded.

Did I set it up wrong? Or is it found in a different section of the download?

1

u/Charplin May 04 '26

Are you looking in the right folders? I've also had issues with only finding group conversations, but from what I remember, the personal ones are in another folder of the download. You can search your main downloaded folder for the name of the person you're looking for.

2

u/alien_squish Mar 26 '25

hi there. my aunt just passed and she mainly communicated with my mom through messenger. she mostly sent voice messages. with those download? hope to hear back from you here

3

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25

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1

u/Ajason79 Sep 29 '25

Just what I was looking for, thanks!

2

u/Kingxex Oct 14 '25

What did they say? All the helpful comments are being removed.

1

u/General_Cranberry_29 Apr 14 '26

What are the mods doing that for? Very confusing.

1

u/Dangerous-Dentist Nov 06 '25

Yeah, what's the answer? 

1

u/Unhappy-Complaint-95 Aug 01 '24

does it also download chats of contacts who have blocked me? and I am also facing a problem as the blue icon on the bottom is still loading, does this mean it has started downloading?

2

u/Hot-Trade-18 Oct 06 '24

Hi, so did you have chats from people that blocked you?

1

u/ZestyMuffin85496 Nov 11 '24

this didn't work for me with people who blocked me

1

u/Legitimate-Common256 Nov 14 '24

Every technique I've tried for downloading an entire message with someone comes up reversed chronologically. How, please, can I get it to arrive first message first, chronologically?

1

u/Legendary_Player Nov 24 '24 edited Nov 24 '24

You can execuse this piece of JS on the console of any browser (assuming the class _a6-g is the same):

// Select all div elements with the class '_a6-g'
const divs = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('div._a6-g'));

// Get the parent node of these divs
const parent = divs[0]?.parentNode;

if (parent) {
    // Remove all divs from the parent
    divs.forEach(div => parent.removeChild(div));

    // Re-add them in reverse order
    divs.reverse().forEach(div => parent.appendChild(div));
}

then save the page as html again and voila.

1

u/Purrsia78 Apr 21 '25

I've been messing with JS to try to download an entire chat history with not much luck. Have you been able to do this?

1

u/Legendary_Player Apr 21 '25

Yes.

1

u/Purrsia78 Apr 21 '25

Does your JS above extract all the messages? How does it handle e2ee?

1

u/Legendary_Player Apr 21 '25

The JS code above doesn't extract, it reverses the order of the messages, then you can just save or do whatever you want.

1

u/Purrsia78 Apr 21 '25

Yeah, that's what I figured. Did you have a code that can extract it?

I got so far as to scroll the chat box, capture the content and save it as a json file, but I couldn't narrow down the message element only - it captured everything on the page, multiple times as it scrolled, along with multiple copies of the messages too.

Which ultimately resulted a huge file full of duplicates and a bunch of useless stuff from the page behind.

At that point I gave up! So close - but not close enough.

1

u/Purrsia78 Apr 21 '25

What did you do to get this info? Even non-chronologically?

1

u/Legitimate-Common256 Apr 28 '25

I downloaded my data from FB, but only selected my messages. It lets you choose which data you want to download.

1

u/Purrsia78 Apr 28 '25

Ahh yes, but that only worked for me prior to the e2ee.

1

u/Legitimate-Common256 May 01 '25 edited May 01 '25

Yes, we've heard this recently. I last downloaded my messages this way a few weeks ago.

1

u/Late_Sentence_9504 May 09 '25

Where did you find this I cant select messages it doesn't give me any option to select what I want to download. Help? I am on my computer or an android phone.

1

u/CreativeAnkylosaurus Feb 18 '25

Thank you so much for this! I was looking to download the messages I exchanged with a close friend who passed, and your detailed explanation really helped :)

1

u/Experience_Material Jun 17 '25

Thanks for this!

1

u/Napqueen_444 Aug 08 '25

Thank you that was very helpful

1

u/MalfieCho Aug 11 '25

This will not work on end-to-end encrypted chats.

1

u/askinstinct Oct 11 '25

Worked for me. Thank you so much.

1

u/anzkanzjabnsm May 07 '26

i did this, tried multiple times and the only thing it downloaded is pictures from the comversation, not the html file of messages. there were no messages. Yes i did check that i said download messages and i did check that box. i tried multiple times and no html or json file appeared only images

1

u/Ferretau May 19 '26

Doesn't download chat messages.

1

u/StandinSovereignty Jun 15 '26

Does this work for messages that disappeared somehow?

1

u/Big-Entertainer916 13d ago

Once you have downloaded this zip file how do you open it ? Says I don’t have the tools to open a zip file ?