Retrieve Deleted Facebook Messages

It is impossible to retrieve a Facebook message once you’ve deleted it. Even with a court order, Facebook may not be able to recover the message for you.[1] If you receive Facebook message notifications to your email account, it is possible that you still have a copy of the deleted message, but beyond this, the only thing you can do is prevent making the same mistake in the future. This article will help you check your email for Facebook notifications and offer tips on preventing losing deleted messages in the future.

Steps

Checking to See if a Copy Was Sent to Your Email Inbox

  1. Check your notification settings. Before giving up on the deleted messages, check your notification settings to see if you have them set to send you message notifications.
  2. Log into your Facebook account. Go to Facebook.com and enter your email address and password to log in.
  3. Open your settings. Click on the downward-facing triangle on the top right corner of your page (next to the lock icon). This will open a drop-down menu that includes options like “Create Page”, “Activity Log”, “Log Out”, and “Help”. To open your settings, click on “Settings” in this drop-down menu.
  4. Open “Notifications” settings. Click on the “Notifications” tab on the left side of the “Settings” window. It should be the sixth option down.
  5. Click on “Edit” next to your “Email” notifications settings. Once you have clicked on “Notifications”, you’ll see a list of four options on the right side of the screen: “On Facebook”, “Email”, “Mobile”, and “Text message”. Click on “Edit” (in blue) to the right of “Email”.
  6. Check what you are set to receive. In the email notifications window you’ll see three options beneath a heading that says “What you’ll receive”. Unless you’ve chosen to receive “All notifications, except the ones you unsubscribe from”, you won’t receive message notifications to your email inbox.
  7. Check your turned off notifications. Beneath “What You’ll Receive” you’ll see the heading “Notifications You’ve Turned Off”. Beneath that heading, if you see the word “Messages” with a “Turn On” button to the right of it, you are not receiving email notifications of your Facebook messages. If you don't see that, you should be receiving message notifications.
  8. Check your email. If your notifications settings are set to email “All notifications, except the ones you unsubscribe from” and “Messages” does not show up under “Notifications You’ve Turned Off”, you should be receiving copies of your Facebook messages to your email inbox.
  9. Do a keyword search. If you do not find the message easily, search some key words (for example, the name of the person you communicated with) to see if you still have a copy of your deleted messages or message thread via a Facebook notification email.
  10. Check your email’s trash. Even if you regularly delete your messages, unless you empty your email account’s trash, you may still have those deleted messages in there. The likelihood of those messages being there will depend upon how long ago you deleted them, as some email providers automatically delete trash every 30 days.

Sending Copies of Messages to Your Email Account

  1. Log into your Facebook account. Go to Facebook.com and enter your email address and password to log in.
  2. Open your settings. Click on the downward-facing triangle on the top right corner of your page (next to the lock icon). This will open a drop-down menu that includes options like “Create Page”, “Activity Log”, “Log Out”, and “Help”. To open your settings, click on “Settings” in this drop-down menu.
  3. Open “Notifications” settings. Click on the “Notifications” tab on the left side of the “Settings” window. It should be the sixth option down.
  4. Edit Email notifications settings. Once you have clicked on “Notifications”, you’ll see a list of four options on the right side of the screen: “On Facebook”, “Email”, “Mobile”, and “Text message”. Click on “Edit” (in blue) to the right of “Email”.
  5. Ensure that you receive all notifications. In the email notifications window you’ll see three options beneath a heading that says “What you’ll receive”. Ensure that you’ve chosen to receive “All notifications, except the ones you unsubscribe from”.
    • To unsubscribe from certain notifications, click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of your email notifications when you receive them to your email account.
  6. Turn on “Messages” notifications. If you don’t already receive email notifications for your Facebook messages, you’ll see that you have the option to “Turn on” those notifications in the email notifications window. Click on the “Turn On” button to the right of “Messages” to ensure that you receive copies to your email address that you’ve associated with your Facebook account.
  7. Delete messages in Facebook without fear of losing them. Now that you’ll get copies of every message sent to your email inbox, you can delete your Facebook messages without fear of permanently losing them.
    • If you are concerned about someone checking your Facebook messages AND snooping through your email inbox, you might consider forwarding your messages from your email inbox to another, secret account that no one knows about. Many email accounts offer the option to forward to another address through filter settings.
    • You can also change your email notifications address directly in Facebook by clicking on “Settings”, “Email”, then “Add another email”, entering your new email address, entering your Facebook password, and clicking “Save Changes”.[2]
  8. Consider creating a Facebook folder in your email account. If you receive a lot of Facebook messages each day, or if you don’t check your email often, your email inbox could be flooded with message notifications from Facebook. By saving or automatically filtering those messages into a folder, you can keep your inbox tidy.
  9. Filter messages into your Facebook folder in your email account. Filtering messages differs per email provider (ex., Yahoo, Hotmail/Outlook, Gmail) and program (Inbox, Outlook, Apple Mail); check with your specific provider or do an online search of “filter email messages <provider name>” if you are unsure.
    • To filter Facebook notifications in your Yahoo inbox, with a Facebook message notification email open in your Yahoo mailbox, click on “More” at the top of your mailbox, “Filter Emails Like This”, choose a filter name (ex., Facebook), and a folder to move it to (ex., Facebook — the option to create a new folder is at the bottom of your folder list), then Save.[3]
    • To filter Facebook notifications in your Hotmail/Outlook.com inbox, with a Facebook message notification email selected in your Hotmail inbox, click on “Move to” in the menu at the top of the inbox, then select “Move all email from…” (at the bottom of the drop-down menu), then click on “Move to<select folder>” (at the bottom of the pop-up window), and either choose or create your Facebook folder, and finish by clicking on “Move all”.
    • To filter Facebook notifications in your Gmail inbox, with a Facebook message notification email selected in your Gmail inbox, click on “More” in the menu at the top of your inbox, then “Filter messages like these”, then “Create filter with this search” (bottom right of pop-up window), then select where the messages will filter to (there are many options, including “Apply the label”), then click on the blue “Create filter” button near the bottom left of the window.
    • To filter Facebook notifications in Microsoft Outlook, you can either apply a filter or create a new rule to manage the messages.[4]
    • To filter Facebook notifications in Apple Mail, you’ll create rules as well.[5]

Saving Your Facebook Data

  1. Log into your Facebook account. Go to Facebook.com and enter your email address and password to log in.
  2. Open your settings. Click on the downward-facing triangle on the top right corner of your page (next to the lock icon). This will open a drop-down menu that includes options like “Create Page”, “Activity Log”, “Log Out”, and “Help”. To open your settings, click on “Settings” in this drop-down menu.
  3. Ensure that the “General” tab is selected. Once you are in your “Settings”, ensure that the “General” tab is selected. It is the tab at the top left of the “Settings” menu. When you open “Settings”, it should be automatically opened to the “General” tab.
  4. Download a copy of your Facebook data. Beneath the “General” settings box to the right of the “General” settings tab, you’ll see the words “Download a copy of your Facebook data”. Click on the blue “Download a copy” text.
  5. Click the green “Download Archive” button. When you click on “Download a copy”, a new page will open that says “Download Your Information” and offers you the option to click a green button that says “Download Archive”. Click on this button.
  6. Enter your Facebook password. To continue with the download, you’ll need to enter your Facebook password and hit “Submit” on the pop-up window.
  7. Wait for the download to complete. If the download doesn’t save directly to your computer, check your email account that’s associated with your Facebook account. You should receive an email from Facebook that tells you that your download has begun. Once the download is complete, you’ll receive another email containing a link that brings you to the page with the “Download Archive” button.
  8. Open the data folder. Once you have downloaded the archive to your computer, a subfolder titled facebook-yourusername will appear in your Downloads folder. Open it.
  9. Open index.htm file. Inside the facebook-yourusername folder you’ll see a file titled index.htm. Once you open that file, you can navigate your saved data as though you were on an HTML version of your Facebook page.[6]
  10. Check that the messages you want to save are in your index.htm file. Do this before deleting the messages you want to delete.
  11. Delete Facebook messages permanently. Once you’ve saved backups of your Facebook data, you can delete whatever messages you want without permanently losing copies of your messages.

Tips

  • If you are concerned that you might someday need to access messages that you permanently delete on Facebook, you might consider downloading a copy of your Facebook data regularly. That way, you can still delete messages from your Facebook, but you’ll have backups on a storage device of your choosing (i.e. your computer or an external hard drive).
  • It is possible that Facebook may retain copies of your deleted information for up to 90 days on their server, so if you are seeking to recover a message for legal purposes, your lawyer may be able to retrieve your messages for you with a court order; however, this is not something that you can do on your own.[7]
  • Because it is impossible to retrieve deleted Facebook messages without a court order (and even then, it’s subject to timeline (90 days), plus Facebook’s cooperation and server capabilities), it really is best to take preventative measures like sending duplicates (i.e. message notifications) to your email account and/or saving downloads of your Facebook data regularly.
  • If you’re still on speaking terms with the person/people who was/were part of the message/message thread that you deleted, it is possible that they have not deleted the message, and that you can get a copy from them.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
  2. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/help/327994277286267/
  3. ↑ https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail-for-desktop/personal-filters-sln15994.html
  4. ↑ http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tame-your-outlook-inbox-with-subfolders-rules-and-filters--cms-20590
  5. ↑ https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19162?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US
  6. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254
  7. ↑ http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/court-rules-that-deleted-facebook-posts-are-fair-game/
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