We use WhatsApp every day and almost every moment and that is why practically our entire life is in the messaging application, we tell everything, we write down everything. We talk with friends, with family, with coworkers… And we don’t always find something that we said days, weeks or months ago. Therefore, today we are going to see how we can search for a specific message or data in a conversation.
Surely it has ever happened to you that you remember something you have spoken or said in a WhatsApp chat and now you do not remember. That you need it for something. For example, because your mother asked you to buy something a few days ago and you have still forgotten it. Or if you wrote down a brand, some measurements that you needed or simply because you want to go back in a conversation to find a photo. There is no need to scroll and there are much simpler methods to avoid losing messages.
Use the search engine in a chat or group
Scrolling and sliding your finger up is far from being the most comfortable, the fastest option. WhatsApp has a search engine that you may not know exists. In all chats and conversations we can access that search engine to find a specific word or phrase that you remember. Of course, you will have to remember the exact word or phrase if you want to use this method.
- Open the individual or group chat you need
- Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner
- Choose ” Search “
A bar will open at the top of the screen with a solid line. Write here what you want to search for: a word, a beginning of a word (if you don’t know if it was a telephone or a telephone, for example) and go by tapping on the up and down arrows that you will find on the right. This way you will see all the messages that include that word until you find the one you really need.
Note that this will only work if you haven’t deleted the conversation after that message. Every time you empty or delete the conversation, they disappear.
Search all chats
Another convenient option is to search all chats. Someone told you about a sreie in which your favorite actor or actress appears but you don’t know who it is. In that case, you can use the WhatsApp search engine to search all conversations simultaneously as long as you have not deleted or emptied it from that message. The process is similar to the previous one through the magnifying glass tool.
Now, instead of opening a chat and clicking on the magnifying glass, we will do it globally .
- Open the messaging app
- Go to the main window, chats
- Tap on the magnifying glass at the top right of the app
- Write what you want to search
All the chats or messages that are matched will appear. You can scroll through WhatsApp to open each of the conversations and check what exactly you were looking for. This search engine will also allow you to search for photos, videos, audios and all kinds of multimedia content in your conversations.
Beware of deleting conversations
It is important not to delete conversations if we want to recover old messages or find WhatsApp messages. Don’t delete or empty chats if they bother you in the main window. If that person doesn’t usually talk to you anymore but you don’t want so many chats to appear on the screen, just hold down the conversation and click on the box icon and the arrow at the top right of the screen. This way we archive the messages and they do not appear in the main window but those people can talk to us whenever they want (they are not blocked) and their conversation has not disappeared forever.
Backup copy
One of the ways to avoid unintentionally losing conversations is to have WhatsApp backups updated that will allow us to have control over the messages we have stored in the app. You can set up automatic backups that take place at dawn and store your chats and photos in the cloud and on your phone. In case of accidentally deleting a chat or that the mobile is damaged, you can recover it without any problem in most cases.
To make the backup the steps we must follow are:
- Open WhatsApp
- Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner
- Open settings
- Go to the Chat section
- Tap on “Backup”
Here you will see the data of the last copy:
- Time of the copy made locally
- Copy time to Google Drive
- Backup size
You can tap on “Save” to make one immediately. You can also configure Google Drive backups and messages:
- When to save: Daily, weekly, monthly, never …
- Email address or Google account
- Save using WiFi or WiFi + mobile data
- Include or not videos
Avoid getting lost
If you know that a message is important and you don’t want it to get lost, you can mark it as a featured. You may not know that this function exists but it will help us to have everything under control when there is something important that we want to access.
- Go to the chat or conversation you want
- Press and hold the message or messages you want to save
- They will appear as selected
- Tap on the star in the top bar of the screen
They will have been saved as starred messages. Once you have it, they will continue to be featured until you delete them. To consult them, the steps are simple:
- Open WhatsApp
- Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner
- Choose “Starred Messages”
You will see all the stored messages, saved to read later.
Image is blurry
It may be that when looking for a photograph or an old message we realize that the image appears blurred in the conversation and we cannot see it again. Why? This occurs in the event that there is no copy of the photo or image in the internal memory of your mobile phone or in the memory of the SD card. At some point you have deleted the photo from the gallery and it continues to appear in WhatsApp in individual chats or groups but you cannot recover the file because it is no longer there. In this case we have no choice but to ask that person to resend it.
