Facebook Download Your Information: Find One Conversation

How to find one conversation

What each folder holds

• inbox holds your ordinary conversations.
• archived_threads holds conversations you archived.
• message_requests holds messages from people you had not accepted.
• filtered_threads appears to hold conversations Facebook filtered out of your main list.
• e2ee_cutover and e2ee_cutover_archived hold conversations that Messenger later moved to end-to-end encryption. Facebook does not explain these names in the download; that reading comes from the name and from what we found inside them.

The messages folder also contains files that are not conversations, such as settings and lists of blocked contacts. You can ignore them.

Things that look wrong but are not

• The same person can have two or more folders with different numbers. Each is a separate chat as Messenger sees it. If you want the whole history, you need all of them.
• Folders named facebookuser_ and a number are conversations where the other account no longer has a name, typically because it was deleted or deactivated. Several different people can look the same.
• A folder can contain only photos, with no message file. There is nothing to read in it.
• Your conversations with Meta AI are in there too, in a folder of their own.
• A group chat is a folder like any other. Its message file lists every participant.

Recent messages may not be there

Messenger now encrypts personal chats end to end, and those messages are not in this download. If a conversation stops earlier than it does in the app, the rest is in a separate file. How to Download End-to-End Encrypted Messenger Chats has the steps.

Why the download is so large

The text of the messages is small. In the download we examined, 185 conversations came to about 15 MB of message files, inside a download of nearly 4 GB. Everything else was photos and videos. If you only need the text, request the download again with only Messages ticked and the media quality set to low. It is far easier to handle.

If the download arrived as more than one zip, the message files may all be in one of them. Facebook Download in Several Zip Files: Where Are the Messages? explains how to tell.

Once you have the file open, How to Read Facebook Messenger message_1.json Files explains the fields, the timestamps, and why emoji look garbled.

Skipping the folder hunt

Verity reads the zip without unzipping it. Drop the whole download on the upload box and it lists every conversation by the person’s name, longest first, with a search box. Pick one and only that conversation is read. Chats with the same person in separate folders are joined into one. The zip is opened in your browser and is not uploaded.

This is general information, not legal advice. Verity is not a law firm, and requirements for authenticating a digital record vary by court — talk to an attorney about what your case specifically needs.