How to export a WhatsApp chat, properly
4 min read
Open the chat, tap its name, scroll down to Export chat, choose Without media. WhatsApp builds a .zip and hands it to your share sheet. The per-phone detail is below, along with what actually goes wrong.
On iPhone
- Open the chatThen tap the contact or group name at the top of the screen. That opens the chat info page, not the app settings.
- Scroll all the way downExport Chat sits below Clear Chat. It is a long way down, which is why most people believe the option does not exist.
- Choose Without MediaTwo buttons appear. The right one sends photos, videos and voice notes along with the text, and takes the archive from a few megabytes to several hundred.
- Send the file wherever you wantThe iOS share sheet opens. Save to Files is enough: you pick the .zip up afterwards, without going through another app.
On Android
- Open the chat, then the three dot menuTop right.
- Go to More, then Export chatOn recent versions, Export chat is directly in the menu without going through More. Both paths reach the same screen.
- Choose Without mediaSame choice as on iPhone, same consequences for the size of the file.
- Pick a destinationThe Android share sheet offers your apps. Saving to the phone files is the easiest one to find again.
What you actually get
Not a text file: a .zip, named something like DOC-20260811-WA0000.zip. That is normal, and it is the standard case, not a fault. Inside, only one file matters, the one holding the conversation.
Its name depends on the phone, and that is the most common source of confusion. On iPhone it is called _chat.txt. On Android it is named after the thread, for example WhatsApp Chat with <name>.txt. Both hold the same thing, written slightly differently: the exact format is broken down here.
⚠️ An export without media still contains attachments. WhatsApp includes the contact cards (.vcf) of anyone shared in the chat. Across ten real conversations, six had them, up to eight in a single one. That is not a failed export: the text file then carries lines like Charles.vcf (file attached), and the conversation itself is complete.
With or without media: the real difference
Across eight real archives, the text file weighed 12.7 MB on its own, and the media accounted for everything else. That is a ratio of one to several dozen. Exporting with media means waiting several minutes, choking a share sheet, and sometimes failing outright on a phone that is out of space.
For an analysis, media adds nothing: a photo does not read like a sentence. What does count is the fact that a media message was sent, and that survives in the export without media, as a <Media omitted> line. Nothing about the conversation is lost, only the files themselves.
Exporting a group chat
The steps are identical: you tap the group name at the top, and the option is in the same place. You do not need to be an admin.
Two things change inside the file. Participants who are not in your address book appear as a raw phone number, something like +33 6 44 81 42 18, rather than a name. And service messages, people joining, leaving, the group being renamed, sit between the messages with no author.
How many messages can you export?
You will read everywhere that the cap is 40,000 messages without media, and 10,000 with. That figure does not hold up. Across the nine real conversations used to calibrate RevealChat, 196,830 messages in total, the largest exported thread contains 71,293, over nearly seven years of history. It came out whole.
The lesson is not a different number, it is that there is no reliable number to quote. The limit depends on the WhatsApp version, the phone, and the memory free at the moment of the export. If yours was truncated, it starts at a recent date instead of the beginning of the conversation: you can see that on the first line of the file.
When the export does not work
| What you see | What is happening | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| There is no Export option | The chat info page is not open, or the list has not been scrolled to the bottom. | Tap the contact name at the top of the chat, then scroll below Clear Chat. |
| The export runs then stops | Almost always an export with media on a long conversation. | Start again and choose Without media. |
| The file is empty or tiny | The chat was just cleared, or the export was run on the wrong thread. | Open the .txt and look at its first line: it gives the date of the first exported message. |
| An app refuses the file | It expects a .txt and cannot open a .zip. | RevealChat reads the .zip directly. Nothing to unzip by hand. |
Before you send that file anywhere
An export holds the other person’s messages as much as yours, and they did not ask for this. That is not a reason to do nothing, it is a reason to look at where the file goes: what a tool does with it, and what it keeps, can be checked before you hand it over. The questions to ask are listed here.
And never email it to a support inbox, including ours. For an import problem, a screenshot of the error is enough.
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