How-To

How to Open and Read a WhatsApp Chat Export (_chat.txt)

You exported a WhatsApp chat and ended up with a .zip or a .txt file. It is plain text, so nothing special is needed to open it. Reading it correctly is the harder part: the date order depends on the phone that made it, and an export is not always the whole chat.

How to open the file

1.Find the file

On an iPhone, WhatsApp produces a .zip that contains a file named _chat.txt, plus the photos and videos if you chose Attach Media. On Android, it produces a file named "WhatsApp Chat with" followed by the contact or group name, ending in .txt.

2.Unzip it if it came from an iPhone

On the phone, tap the .zip in the Files app and it unpacks into a folder. On a computer, double-click it. The text is in _chat.txt.

3.Open it in any text editor

Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac will open it. Work on a copy and leave the original file untouched, because a text file can be edited by anyone and the unedited original is what you want to be able to produce later.

What a line looks like

Every message starts with the date and time, then the sender, a colon, and the message. The punctuation differs between iPhone and Android:

[3/14/24, 9:41:07 PM] Dana: Are you picking up the kids?
3/14/24, 9:41 PM - Dana: Are you picking up the kids?

The first line is the iPhone layout, the second is Android. A message with line breaks in it continues on the following lines with no date in front. A line that has a date but no sender and colon is a system notice, such as the encryption notice at the top of the chat or a note that someone changed the group name.

The sender is shown the way the contact is saved on the phone that made the export. If the number is not saved in that phone, the line shows the phone number.

The date order depends on the phone

This is the part that causes real mistakes. WhatsApp writes dates in the regional format of the phone that made the export. A phone set to the United States writes month first. A phone set to almost anywhere else writes day first, sometimes with dots (14.03.2024), a 24-hour clock, or a. m. and p. m. in place of AM and PM.

So 03/04/24 is March 4 in one export and 3 April in another, and nothing on that line tells you which. To find out, look for a line where one of the first two numbers is above 12: 14/03/24 can only be day first. Check this before you build a timeline from the file, and say which order the export uses when you hand it to someone else.

Photos, deleted messages and edits

  • A photo or video exported without media appears as <Media omitted> on Android or a short note such as image omitted on iPhone. With media attached, iPhone exports name the file, as in <attached: 00000012-PHOTO-2024-03-14-21-41-07.jpg>.
  • A deleted message appears as This message was deleted or You deleted this message. The original words are not in the file.
  • An edited message shows its current wording, marked <This message was edited>. The earlier wording is not in the file.

iPhone exports also contain invisible formatting characters at the start of some lines. They do not show in an editor, but they can make a search or a spreadsheet import behave oddly.

An export is not always the whole chat

An export contains the chat as it exists on that phone on the day of the export. Messages cleared from the phone before then are not in it. WhatsApp also limits how many messages one export includes; the limits are widely reported as the most recent 40,000 messages without media, or 10,000 with media. If the chat is long, check the first date in the file against when the conversation actually began.

If you have not made the export yet, the steps are in How to Export a WhatsApp Chat for Court.

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.

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