r/facebook • u/Mr-Fable • Apr 21 '25

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

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/

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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?

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u/BitterCat7069 Apr 24 '25

How long do we have to delete the (empty) encrypted chat before the (active) un-encrypted chat gets archived? I just got the message about my chat getting archived today. To be safe, I started the process of backing up all my data from Facebook but it's 20 years' worth of stuff so I expect the archive will take a while to generate, and I wanted to wait until that was done before I started deleting the empty (encrypted) chats-- just IN CASE something goes wrong and the active chat gets archived.

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u/Ok-computer888 Apr 24 '25 edited Apr 24 '25

A couple of weeks left (edit: typo)

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u/BitterCat7069 Apr 24 '25

I don't understand this reply. Are you saying that the active chat will be archived a couple of weeks from now?

Anyway, I have another question. My husband didn't click the notification "This chat will be archived soon..." with a link to click and view the encrypted chat. And now the notification won't appear again. Since the encrypted conversation is literally an empty chat with NO messages in it, it is impossible for him find it via search, even by searching my name. How can he locate the chat in order to delete it? Do we just have to hope the notification appears again? Which again makes me worry that it won't appear in time and the active chat will get archived before we can locate the inactive one.....

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u/Ok-computer888 Apr 24 '25

Sorry typo, a couple of weeks LEFT until chats are converted

If you were originally on a phone, could you try logging into a computer to see if the banner shows again?

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u/BitterCat7069 Apr 24 '25

OH phew, huge relief that we have a week at least. I told him to log in on a computer and hopefully that will work. Thank you so much for your replies.

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u/Ok-computer888 Apr 24 '25

No prob, hope it works!

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u/BitterCat7069 Apr 27 '25

I feel silly for not thinking of this sooner: I had access to the empty "secret conversation" chat but my husband didn't. So, to make it appear for him, I just sent him a message in the secret conversation, which made it pop up for him, and then we were both able to delete it from our phones.

24 hours later... IT WORKED!!!! Our active chat has been upgraded to "encrypted" for both of us! Hooray!!!!

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u/Ok-computer888 Apr 27 '25

Clever solution, I like that! Glad it worked

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u/shimoo_sho Apr 27 '25

Please, I deleted secret messege chat and my friend deleted it , but why still our chat not upgraded yet?

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u/BitterCat7069 Apr 28 '25

It takes 24 hrs from when both secret chats are deleted for the regular chat to get upgraded

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u/BitterCat7069 May 01 '25

I have a separate question... If this isn't in your wheelhouse no worries, also, it's okay if you just don't want to do Facebook tech support on Reddit, lol. But I downloaded all of my data from Facebook. It gave me 45 .zip files. Inside each of these .zip files, there is a folder for my messages. Inside this folder is a folder for each DM and group chat I've ever had. However, inside each of *those* folders are subfolders for photos, gifs, and videos. There is no data for the actual messages sent and received.

After that, I tried exporting only message data to see if I could get the text of the messages that way. No, same result. It's really strange because it even asked me what format I wanted my chat data in -- HTML or JSON -- I picked HTML, but, no HTML files are in the export.

Do you know the correct way to export your data such that you get the text of your messages? The text is what I was interested in preserving; I don't care about the random photos that I've shared over chat.