If you want to retrieve messages that you have mistakenly, or voluntarily, deleted, WhatsApp saves a copy of your messages in the WhatsApp/Databases folder on your Android device daily (at 4 a.m.). The procedure to recover them will depend on their age; however, you will not be able to recover messages older than seven days, the maximum time that WhatsApp keeps the backup copies.
How To Retrieve Deleted WhatsApp Messages from Android Phone or Tablet
The procedure for retrieving recent messages is simple: just uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp on your mobile phone. During the installation process, you will be asked if you want to restore your message history. At this point, choose Restore:
After you have chosen to restore the messages, deleted messages will appear in the Chats window. If some messages don’t appear, they may be part of an older backup.
N.B. Before uninstalling WhatsApp, we recommend that you back up your conversations.
How To Restore and Get Back Older WhatsApp Messages on Android
Before you start restoring your older messages, keep in mind that your last conversations will be erased during the process. You will only be able to recover messages from backups of the last seven days. Additionally, your cell number, registered in WhatsApp, must be the same one that you had when the backup was made.
To start the restoring process, copy the contents of the WhatsApp/Database folder, located in the internal or external memory of your device, to a folder on your PC. Then, uninstall WhatsApp.
Open the folder where you copied the files (on your PC), and delete the file msgstore.db.crypt7 or msgstore.db.crypt8. Once you have done this, choose the backup that you want to restore and rename it. msgstore-Year-Month-Day.1.db.crypt7 should become msgstore.db.crypt7, and msgstore-Year-Month-Day.1.db.crypt8 should become msgstore.db.crypt8.
Reinstall WhatsApp on your device, but don’t open it. Connect your device to the PC using the USB cable. Copy the file that you renamed on your PC to the WhatsApp/Database folder on your device. (If the folder is empty, you simply paste it. If a file with the same name exists, you will need to replace it.)
Now, open WhatsApp, and choose Restore when the message restoration window appears:
