WhatsApp is the main messaging app for many people. If you use WhatsApp for years, there’s a chance that you have conversations with more than 40.000 exchanged messages. This means that you can’t export the conversation through WhatsApp Export feature since it’s over the limit. You can still back up and restore backups of WhatsApp conversations to/from Google Drive. Just can’t access and read conversations anywhere else except WhatsApp. However, if you’re in dire need to export one of those gargantuan conversations, we run into a Chrome extension. Learn below how to export a large WhatsApp chat.
How can I export more than 40.000 WhatsApp messages?
Unless your device is rooted, there’s no way to export a WhatsApp conversation with more than 40.000 messages (10.000 messages if you include media) on your phone. That’s just the service limitation. Although some websites advertise tools that can do that for you, don’t fall for them. If any service can access your private data with ease, encryption wouldn’t mean much. All WhatsApp chats are encrypted and, on recent Android versions, stored in a different path. So, using your Android or iPhone is out of the question.
However, it seems that there’s a PC browser extension that will cost you some money but it can grab chats from WhatsApp for Web. It allows you to download chat history including media files. Based on our research, it did work well for most users. The only drawback is that it exports chat history as HTML with media that’s not preferable for some but you have an option to export just text as CVS (sheet file). This basically a web page grab that incorporates a complete chat history. You can get it on Chrome or Edge, just make sure to follow the dev’s instructions. At the moment, it’s $5.
Some users report that, with it, they backed up chats with up to 200.000 exchanged messages. We have no affiliation with the developer, still need to say that this might be your only option. You need to understand that an app such as WhatsApp that contains a ton of private data has to make exporting by third-party services hard. At the end of the day, you don’t want questionable tools having access to your conversations.
If your conversation is less than 40.000 WhatsApp messages or 10.000 messages if you include media, you can export them with WhatsApp on your phone. Just open the conversation, tap on the 3-dots menu, and select More > Export chat on Android.
On iOS, tap on the contact at the top and select Export Chat. You’ll get the file with your chat history that you can share. Sending it as an email to yourself is probably the way to go. In addition, this file will contain only locally-stored files (texts and media files that are stored on the current device). So you won’t get old messages if you change your phone, regardless if you restore chats from WhatsApp Backup.
And, with that said, we can conclude this article. Thank you for reading and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.
