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Export a chat to import older history
WhatsApp gives a linked device only part of the past, and cannot be talked into giving the rest. Your phone will write any conversation out in full, though. Export it there, upload the file, and it joins the cache like everything else: readable, searchable, available to Claude.
On the phone
- Open the conversation.
- Open its menu and choose Export chat. On iPhone it is behind the contact's name at the top; on Android behind the three dots.
- Choose Include media if you want the photos and voice notes to come along. Without it the messages still arrive; the media does not.
- Send the file to yourself — email, a cloud drive, anything that gets it to your computer.
In the panel
- Open the Import history tab.
- Choose the file: a
.zip, or the.txton its own if you exported without media. Up to 256 MB. - Leave "which conversation" alone: it works that out from the file itself, by the messages it already recognises or by who is in it. Pick one only if it gets it wrong.
- Upload. Uploading the same file twice changes nothing; every message is matched against what is already stored, so nothing is doubled.
Good to know
- Both export shapes are understood — the iPhone one and the Android one — in the languages WhatsApp writes them in.
- Times in an export are the phone's local time, so days near a timezone change can shift by an hour. Messages already known from sync keep their exact timestamps.
- WhatsApp's own notices ("messages are end-to-end encrypted", "you created this group") are recognised and left out, so they do not show up as something someone said.