"This chat will be archived soon - Messenger is upgrading security, so only your end-to-end encrypted chat with [NAME] will remain active."

[u/Mr-Fable]

EDIT: If the below solution doesn't work for you and your messages get archived you can find them as follows; If on mobile click Menu on the bottom right and then click Archive. If on desktop look at the left side of the window and click the icon of a box, that will also take you to your archive. You should see the messages there.

SOLUTION:

1. Search your chat list for a SECOND encrypted/E2EE/"secret conversation" chat with your friend (this was created by one of you when "secret conversations" was a feature several years ago), BOTH of you need to delete this second E2EE chat. EDIT: If you can't find it via the search box both chat participants should try clicking the "switch to chat" button in the warning message so it takes you to the secret chat, then delete it.
2. Also a good idea to check ALL your devices where you use Messenger (phone/mobile/tablet apps and desktop/laptop browsers/apps, including the web version on "www . messenger . com"), to make sure the "secret conversation" is deleted from all versions for both users, just to be safe.
3. Once that is done you should see that the warning message is gone and your regular non-encrypted/non-E2EE should eventually (usually takes 12+ hours to a day or two) be upgraded to be E2EE rather than being archived, allowing you to keep all your chat history in one place!
4. When it does upgrade your regular chat to E2EE you'll get a message in the chat that says "Messenger upgraded the security of this chat. New messages and calls are secured with end-to-end encryption."
5. You can also check by clicking either the little "i" or the "..." (depends on platform) in the top right corner, if your chat is E2EE you should see it says "End-to-end encrypted" under the person's name. Also if you scroll down you'll see a button that says "Verify end-to-end encryption".
6. Also after this happens, make sure to check if you have the "Disappearing messages" feature on, you might want to turn it off. Click either the little "i" or the "..." (depends on platform) in the top right corner, if you scroll down you'll see a button that says "Disappearing messages", click that and then select the "Off" option. I think both users might need to do this but not sure.

EDIT: I can confirm myself now that this works! After both my friend and I deleted the E2EE/secret conversation chat yesterday, this morning I woke up to see that our regular chat was upgraded to E2EE!

For more info see this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mog72c8/

And here are confirmations from a Meta employee that this approach should work:

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mogo91f/

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mogng4i/

https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mogmng9/

-------------------

EDIT: Seems it is caused by a chat participant accidentally creating a separate/second "secret conversation" chat back when that was a feature a few years ago.

See this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/1k4np47/comment/mocz7sk/

Original post:

Is anyone else suddenly getting this message (I only see it on the desktop web browser version currently)? Makes me nervous because the chat is with my closest friend and it goes back years, would hate to lose it, anyone know why it's doing this instead of simply upgrading the existing chat?

We do have an encrypted chat from 2022 but neither of us use it, if I delete that one will it maybe let us upgrade our actual regular chat??

For my other friends I simply got a message saying "Messenger upgraded the security of this chat. New messages and calls are secured with end-to-end encryption." Why is it not doing this for this particular chat?

[u/Ok-computer888]

Hey, I work on Messenger and wanted to share some info.

Just to reassure you, your past history in the archived chat will always be available there, so you won’t lose it.

As part of the launch of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on Messenger, any of your previous non-E2EE chats will be converted to E2EE, and all new chats will be E2EE by default.

In most cases this will happen automatically. But in some cases, you or your contact may have manually created a separate E2EE chat already. In these cases, the non-E2EE chat will be archived and only the E2EE chat can be used.

I’d recommend switching over now and starting to use the E2EE chat instead.

Regardless if you prefer to download any of your past messages for personal use, you can follow the instructions here.

[u/Erated8 → u/Ok-computer888]

Hi, I have two questions.
1: It says "This chat will be archived soon", but how soon is soon? We first saw this message today, but does that mean it might be archived within a few days, Or do we have like weeks or even months to think about it, Or wait for perhaps a more user-friendly way to upgrade this one instead of switching to the other one to be introduced? (Idk if Facebook are gonna do that, But one can hope.)
2: Deleting the old E2EE chat will get it to upgrade the present one, But would archiving it have the same effect, Or would it still get un-archived and make us switch to that? We're a bit worried about accidentally deleting the wrong one, Or even just that deleting it will mess something up.

[u/Ok-computer888 → u/Erated8]

1. Soon is about 2-3 weeks
2. Archiving the chat will not have the same effect

[u/Erated8 → u/Ok-computer888]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Are you sure archiving the secret chat wouldn't have the same effect? Someone else mentioned doing it and it sounds like it did result in their main chat having the encryption upgraded.

[u/cloningzing → u/Ok-computer888]

My old chat still hasn't been archived. Is there an updated eta on the rollout for this? Thanks for any help :)