How to Retrieve Deleted Facebook Messages

Open Facebook by accessing https://www.facebook.com/ from your computer’s web browser. This will open your Facebook News Feed page if you’re signed in.

• If you’re not logged in, enter your Facebook account’s email address and password, and then click Log In .

Click the “Menu” icon

(Menu) in the upper right corner of the Facebook page to open a selection list.

• For some users, this icon looks like a gear.

Click Settings in the drop-down list to open this page.

Click the Notifications tab on the left side of the page.

Click Email near the top of the page to expand the “Email” section.

Turn on message backup. Check the box to the left of the “All notifications, except the ones you unsubscribe from” line in the “WHAT YOU’LL RECEIVE” section. receive). This will ensure any messages you receive are copied to your email inbox, but it will also enable email notifications for all Facebook activity.

• You can also unsubscribe from non-message notifications by opening a notification email and clicking Unsubscribe below the email.

Open Facebook by accessing https://www.facebook.com/ from your computer’s browser. This will open your Facebook News Feed page if you’re signed in.

• If you’re not logged in, enter your Facebook account’s email address and password, then click Log In .

Click the “Menu” icon

(Menu) in the top-right corner of the page to open a selection list.

• For some users, this icon looks like a gear.

Click Settings in the drop-down list.

Click the General tab on the left side of the page.

Click the Download your information link below the General settings page.

Click the Deselect All link in the bottom-right corner of the page. This will deselect all cells on the currently visible page.

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and check the “Messages” box in the middle of the page. Just ticking the “Messages” box ensures you’re not downloading unnecessary data.

Scroll to the top of the screen and click the Create File button on the right side of the page to ask Facebook to create a backup file.

Open the mailbox of the email address that you use to log in to Facebook.

Waiting for email from Facebook. Facebook can prepare the download within 10 minutes, but this will vary depending on the number of conversations in the Messenger inbox.

Open the download email. After receiving the email, click to open “Your Facebook download is ready”.

• If you use Gmail with multiple tags, you’ll see this email in the Social tab.
• Remember to check your Spam folder ( Spam or Junk ) if you don’t receive an email from Facebook within 10 minutes.

Click the Download Your Information link in the body of the email. This will take you to the Facebook download page.

Click the Download button to the right of the file to download near the center of the page.

Enter password. You enter the password used to log in to Facebook when prompted.

Click the blue Submit button at the bottom of the window that appears. This will start downloading the ZIP folder containing the messages to your computer.

• The download time will vary depending on the size of the archived message.

Extract the downloaded ZIP folder. Double-click to open the ZIP folder, then select Extract at the top of the window, click Extract all on the toolbar, and click Extract when prompted. Once the decompression is complete, the regular (unzipped) version of the folder will open.

• On a Mac, you can simply double-click the ZIP folder to extract it and open the extracted folder.