Archiving, Deleting and Recovering Facebook Messages

Archiving, Deleting and Recovering Facebook Messages: The process of Archiving Facebook messages involves hiding several conversations from the Facebook's Inbox folder briefly. This process differs especially from deleting, in that it is done to ensure the safekeeping of the said messages. The whole history of the conversation will be kept safe in addition.

Users may prefer to archive Facebook messages to avoid flooding of their inbox with the messages that they do not want to use regularly. Once the friend whose conversation you have archived sends you a new message, the whole conversation gets un-archived and reappears in the Inbox folder.

• How to Archive Facebook Messages

Method 1: Archiving From the Conversations List (Offered in the Left Pane of the Messages Page).

• Sign-in properly into your Facebook Account.
• From your profile's primary page, click the label 'Messages' from the left pane.
• After opening the messages pane, ensure that you remain in the Inbox area.

Note: The 'messages' label will be highlighted provided you are still in the Inbox area.

• Select the conversation that you wish to archive.
• After selecting, click the 'Archive' label at the bottom-right corner of the selected conversation to archive all its messages.

Method 2: Archiving directly from an Open conversation (In the Right Pane of the Messages Page).

• From your profile's primary page, click the 'Messages' label from the left pane.
• Next, from the shown conversations in the left pane, select the one that you wish to archive.
• After selecting, from the ideal pane, click the Actions tab from the top-right corner of the message window.
• Select Archive from the drop down options.
• Optionally, you can push Ctrl + Del or Ctrl + Backspace to archive a opened conversation. 

• How to Checkout Archived Facebook Messages

Although an archived conversation immediately reappears when the very same friend sends in a new message, you can open the archived conversation manually from the Archived folder by following the steps below:

• From your opened Facebook account, click the 'Messages' label in the left pane of the homepage.
• Next, click the 'More menu' above the conversation list in the left pane.
• Select 'Archived' from the drop down options.
• You can now see all the archived conversation in the Archived folder that opens. 

• How to Delete Facebook Messages

There is an inbuilt feature on Facebook which allows users to either erase a whole conversation or erase a specific message from within a conversation.

a. How to delete an entire conversation:

1. Ensure that you are properly signed-in to your Facebook account.

2. Click the 'Messages' label in the left pane of your profile's homepage.

3. Next, from the shown conversations, click to open the one that you wish to delete.

4. Click the 'Actions' label on the top right corner of the opened conversation window in the right.

5. Select 'Delete conversation' from the drop down options.


6. Click ‘Delete Conversation’ in the opened ‘Delete This Entire Conversation’ verification box.



b. How to delete a particular message from a conversation:

1. After signing-in to your Facebook account, click the ‘Messages’ label in the left pane of your profile's homepage.

2. Next, from the opened Messages page, navigate to the left area, click to open the conversation from which you wish to delete the messages.

3. Click the ‘Actions’ label from the top-right corner of the message window on the right.

4. Select ‘Delete messages’ from the drop down options.


5. Next, inspect the checkboxes, representing the messages that you wish to delete.

6. After selecting the message(s), click ‘Delete’ from the bottom-right corner of the message window.


7. On the shown ‘Delete These Messages’ verification box, click the ‘Delete Messages’ button to delete the selected messages.


Note: When you delete a discussion or its messages, the action can’t be reversed, and you can’t recover the messages. However, deleting a conversation or its messages from your Facebook account doesn’t remove them from the other party’s inbox.

• How to Recover Archived Facebook Messages

1. Click the ‘Messages’ label in the left pane on your Facebook profile’s homepage.
2. When you are on the ‘Messages’ pane, click the ‘more’ label above the conversation lists in the left pane.
3. Select ‘Archived’ from the drop-down menu to see the archived conversations.
4. Find the conversation that you wish to recover on the left pane.
5. Click the ‘unarchive’ icon at the bottom-right corner of the target discussion to move all its messages back to the Inbox folder.


Note: The read/unread status of the discussion stays the same on archiving or un-archiving.

Archiving messages is similar to moving the unimportant files to a cabinet for safekeeping, instead of losing them by process of deleting.
The process of Archiving tidies up your inbox by getting hardly utilized messages from your conversations list while allowing you easy access to them in the future. Whereas, deleting the messages removes them from your account without any way to recover them.