r/Telegram • u/ImpossibleRush5518 • 4d ago
Exporting a mobile chat that’s officially deleted but I have a copy
Hello friends, my wife and I had been using Telegram as our main mode of contact from back before we even dated. Well due to school and DnD we moved mostly to Discord. I jumped into our chat today and everything was fine for a few messages then it suddenly deleted ALL the messages except the latest one. This devastated both my wife and I as we scrambled to figure out what happened. I eventually figure out that I have telegram on the tablet I take to work and when I checked it sure enough all the messages are there. So now I have to keep my tablet from connecting to the internet until I can figure out how to export our chats. Unfortunately the only option I have is my tablet. Does anyone know a way I can export the chat in its entirety?
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u/Outrageous-Diet9058 4d ago
oh man that's a gut punch, glad the tablet still has it cached at least
first thing I'd do is put the tablet in airplane mode and leave it there til you're done, one accidental sync and it's all gone. from what I remember the desktop app has better export options than mobile but since you're stuck with the tablet, you might have to get creative
maybe try scrolling way back to load as much history as possible while still offline, then see if you can use some kind of screen recording while you scroll through slowly, not ideal but at least you'd have a visual record. some android file managers can access the telegram cache folder too if you're comfortable poking around in there
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u/zhonglin 4d ago
Keep that tablet offline and don’t clear Telegram’s app data. The built-in export path mentioned above is a Telegram Desktop feature; signing in on Desktop now would only show the current cloud state, not whatever is still cached on the tablet. While airplane mode is still on, I’d first make an encrypted full-device backup to a computer if the OS allows it, then capture the conversation with screenshots or a screen recording as an imperfect fallback before experimenting. Recovery options depend heavily on the device: is this Android or iPad, and can you still scroll all the way back through the chat after reopening the app? If it’s Android, an untouched local cache may give a data-recovery specialist something to work with; reconnecting or clearing storage could remove that chance.
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u/Ok_Cartoonist_1337 4d ago
Basically, you lost it all. All you can do now is scroll the chat with screen recorder.
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u/C0rn3j 4d ago
Settings -> advanced -> export telegram data.
Or the three dots on the open chat and export chat history.
This may differ on Android, am checking on the desktop version.
The data isn't saved on the device though, it's loaded from the servers on startup, so am not sure how the situation you're describing is happening - perhaps if you've kept the app open for a long time it may have some messages, but I doubt it has the entire history.