With so much spam circulating on social media, it’s getting harder and harder to separate important messages from junk. If you’re a little too fussy about keeping your Facebook inbox clean, sometimes you accidentally delete a message you want to keep. When this happens, you will probably wonder if there is a way to recover your deleted message.
If you find that you need a message to trash, keep reading. You may not like the answer but at least you will have an answer eventually.
Can You Recover Deleted Messages on Facebook?
Short answer – no.
You may see other people saying different things online, but they are referring to something else.
If you suffer from happy fingers and deletion-regret, unfortunately your messages are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. However, there is a glimmer of hope if you have archived the message.
Archiving Your Messages
First, you may want to know how to archive your messages so this doesn’t happen again. When you archive a message, the app temporarily hides it, but does not completely remove it from your inbox. This is useful if you want to clear your inbox without losing messages completely.
Follow the easy steps below to keep your messages in the background.
Step 1 – Login to Facebook
You must be on Facebook to archive your messages. So your first step is to open the app.
Go to the Home screen on your device and tap the app icon.
Step 2 – Go to Messages
Next, it’s time to go to your Messages screen. Tap the Messages link to open your existing messages.
Step 3 – Archive the Message
Finally, it’s time to archive the message. Scroll through your messages and choose the one you want to archive. Tap and hold the message to open the submenu.
In the conversation submenu, select “Archive” to hide them while viewing your Inbox.
The status remains the same when you archive a message. So if it was marked as “Unread” when you archived it, it will still be marked as such.
Also, if the same person sends you another message, the entire archived conversation will appear in your Inbox.
Moving Archived Messages to Inbox
Alternatively, you may want to remove the archived status from a message and see it again in your Inbox. If so, go to the More tab in your Messages pane and select the More option.
Select the Archived folder from the next menu. This will fetch all your archived messages.
Find the message you want to move and tap the Unarchive icon. It is located in the lower right corner of the individual message selection.
Download Archive from Facebook
You can also download your archived messages and history from the Facebook app. This archive contains everything Facebook knows about you, not just the messages you archived. Archived data includes:
- Apps, pages or friends hidden in news feeds
- Country specified in the About section
- IP addresses
- last position
- Everything you like, including sites on Facebook
- Linked accounts
- Language selected
- Input and output data
- Archived messages
However, keep in mind that the messages you delete will not appear in this zip file. If you want to see the information Facebook holds about you, follow these simple steps:
Step 1 – Login to Facebook
First, make sure you’re logged into Facebook. Enter your password and any required credentials to see the home page.
Step 2 – Access the Settings Menu
Next, you need to access your Settings menu. To do this, tap the three horizontal lines in a row located in the upper right corner of your screen.
From your Settings menu, scroll down until you reach Settings & Privacy. Choose this option.
Step 3 – Download Your Information
Finally, tap on Download Your Information on the next menu that appears under Your Facebook Information. Confirm your request by tapping Start My Archive.
Facebook will send a download link to the email address associated with your Facebook account, but it can take hours to compile.
Also, for your security, you may need to re-enter your password to download the zip file.
final thought
Deletion takes forever, especially when it comes to your Facebook messages. But do not despair.
This action will not delete the message if you tapped the “X” icon in the message pane. It archives it.
To delete a message, you need to go through the action drop-down menu and select Delete. Facebook also asks you to confirm the action before permanently deleting it from your account so you know the process is complete.
This failsafe will simply reposition your messages instead of deleting them completely. Therefore, it may be a good idea to check messages before they are written as lost forever.
