Trying to transfer whatsapp chats to new phone - help please!

HeidiHeidi

I am trying to transfer my WhatsApp chats to a new phone, both phones are Samsung android. I've got everything else across, but seem to have run into the sand with WhatsApp, and the problem is I don't know what the problem is.

I thought I was backing up chats every day on the old phone (every morning I got a message saying backup being created) but it seems I wasn't - the last backup is showing as 18/10/2018. So I presume there's a huge cache of messages built up.

My Google Drive has just over 2GB of space left (another problem for another day, I have no idea what's clogging up all that storage!).

I set the old phone to back up to Google Drive the other day, and it finally finished today sometime (or at least the message that the backing up was in progress was gone, so I presumed it had finished).

But when I transferred the sim card to the new phone, no "restore" prompt came up, and when I look in my Google Drive, I can't see any file relating to WhatsApp. So I gather that I still have no back up file.

I've tried to restart the backup, but it's stuck spooling on "Preparing Google Drive backup...."7

So.....

Is it the case that if I don't have enough storage in my drive, the backup will fail entirely?

Is there any way I can just backup or transfer just most recent chats, say the last month or 6 months? Or delete ancient chats that are long redundant? I'm sure there's years old rubbish in there that I have no interest in.

Or is there something else that I'm missing?

Thanks in advance for any help!!

Flinty997

If you have you're whatsapp set to download all photos and video in every chat a backup will be gigantic. I think you have to decide what and why you want to backup and then restore to a new phone. If you don't clean it up it will remain huge and probably fail to both backup and restore. Or take literally days.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120642595#Comment_120642595

That's what I'm thinking - the backup seems to have started again, and is showing as 2.7GB 😱

Is there a way of deleting all the media from chats before restarting the backup?

Flinty997

You can turn it off for the heavy chats going forward. But I don't think you can do it for old threads, you've already downloaded. You can also set chats to delete out after a certain time.

You can also copy the entire folder off the phone, if you just want the photos saved before deleting the chat. But I don't think it will restore except from the backup, Perhaps someone online has figured out how to do it. Videos really are a big part of it.

Best to clear out the chats before starting. I don't see anyway around that.

Also consider why you are keeping them? Most whatsapp chats are out of date within a week.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120642706#Comment_120642706

I know, I don't want any of it! Apart from maybe the last month's chats. Esp not all the gazillion rubbish photos and videos.

But I can't figure out how to get around either backing up the lot (possibly crashing my google drive in the process) or losing the lot.

Losing the lot, and starting over, is looking more preferable at the moment.

Alun

You can get 100GB extra Google Drive storage for €1.99 a month, so you could just get that, do the backup and restore and then cancel. Alternatively keep it at €19.99 a year, always handy for backing up photos etc.

Flinty997

You can turn on disappearing messages. By following this...

"This feature can be enabled by going to "Settings" > "Storage and data" > "Manage storage" > "Settings" (gear icon) > "Storage settings" > "Delete messages older than 6 months".

I don't see the delete messages option. But I can turn on disappearing messages to lots of different chats in one go. Might reduce the backup.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120643578#Comment_120643578

Genius! (well, I hope.....)

Within this, I found a means to mass delete all media, so all the photos and videos are gone, I think/hope.

The backup message is now showing "uploading xMB of 1.5GB" - still going at a snails pace, so will probably take days - but at least I know I have space in my drive for it.

I might have a hunt around and see what else I can ditch to help things along. With all my looking at it, I hadn't spotted that storage/data section, that seems to be key.

Thank you!

HeidiHeidi

I'm back to ask for more help.....

Having gone back and forth about a hundred times, it appears that the problem is that my chats aren't uploading/backing up to Google Drive. It's showing on the phone that they are, I have the data down to 375MB so there's definitely enough space in the drive for the file, I've run the backup about five times at this stage, but no file appears in Google Drive.

I've also set the backup to happen automatically (as opposed to the once-off within settings), and this happened today - but still no file appeared.

Hence there's nothing for the new phone to ask to restore when I open WhatsApp on it.

I have checked, and my google account is linked on both phones.

Anyone know why this might be?

I'm almost at the point of just binning all my chat history, but thought I'd ask one more time in case anyone has the magic answer......

Thanks!!

Flinty997

Can you delete old backups and start a new one

DopeTech

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649838#Comment_120649838

No file appears in google drive but when you go to restore on another device it should find it.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120650182#Comment_120650182

I can't find a way to restore on the new phone though.

All the websites/advice I can find say that when I fire up Whatsapp, register my number, etc, it should offer the option to restore - but no such screen appears for me. And I can't find anything within the settings to ask it to restore.

Which makes me think there's nothing in the cloud for it to look to restore.

God, it's so annoying!!!

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120649972#Comment_120649972

The only backup showing on the old phone (prior to the automatic one it did today) was some time in 2018!

Flinty997

It's likely given the previous size it never managed to complete a backup.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120650649#Comment_120650649

But as far as I know it did the automatic one today, of the small amount of data that's left after I culled all the media rubbish. I had previously had it set to only back up when I requested (which I never did).

It certainly looked like a backup happened, and there was no message to say it failed (I don't know if there would/should be though).

But still when I fire up the app in the new phone, no offer to restore appears.

Flinty997

Have you signed into the Google account on the new phone before trying to restore in WhatsApp

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120650722#Comment_120650722

Hmmm, not knowingly.....

Off to check that out now.

Flinty997

This seemed a decent walk through

https://youtu.be/2izHezT9Y1c

HeidiHeidi

Yep, I seem to be all signed in on the new phone. Still no offer to restore.

I think it's unrelated, but when I tried to do the smart switch over wifi, I was told to turn off my VPN and try again - but I've never had a VPN on the phone (I do use one on my laptop). The smart switch worked via cable, everything transferred fine, except for the WhatsApp data.

Flinty997

You can copy the backup from you old phone to the new one aswell.

DopeTech

Check you are signed into google on your new phone, not just in the browser but the account added to the phone. If you open gmail app it should sign you in there if you are already signed in. Then uninstall WhatsApp on the new phone, check the latest version of google drive is installed on both phones, do another backup and reinstall WhatsApp on the new phone and the backup should appear.

28064212

Whatsapp backups don't show up as a regular folder/file on Google Drive. Go here and it will show the time and date of your last backup: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/backups.

However, you can't have two active Whatsapp phones on one Google account. If you've registered your new phone as your "active" Whatsapp installation, all you're doing is backing up your new, empty account.

Also, Whatsapp will only offer to restore your cloud backup on first launch after registering your number. If you get to the point where you can send a message, it won't ever offer to restore without an uninstall: there's no way to manually trigger it

1. First of all, ensure you're logged into the same Google account on both phones (Settings => Google, check email address)
2. Uninstall Whatsapp from your new phone
3. Open Whatsapp on your old phone, ensuring it's now your registered device
4. In Whatsapp, click the three-dots menu button, then settings, then chats, then chat backup, then backup. Wait for it complete, then close Whatsapp
5. On your new device, reinstall Whatsapp. Go through the registration process, and it should offer to restore your cloud backup

HeidiHeidi

I've used that drive link, and i can't see anything resembling a back up done today (which I think actually did happen).

I'm not trying to operate two WhatsApp apps at the same time - I've been switching the sim card between phones and starting up the app each time.

I've done all of the steps listed above, and there is still no option to restore offered.

The Google account registered on each phone is definitely the same one, and everything is working perfectly on the new phone when I put the sim card in, except for this bloody transfer!

I'm sure I'm missing something small in the whole process, and thank you all for your patience and advice with it!!

At this stage I might just have to sacrifice my chat history, start again with the new phone, and just hop the sim card across to the old one if there's something i need to retrieve 🙄

HeidiHeidi

Just to be sure to be sure, I'm running through all those steps one more time (again!) - and this time the backup is showing as just 43MB - which I think suggests it's only backing up my app activity from today?

Which means the 380MB of data has backed up to somewhere - but where???

I've deleted WhatsApp on my new phone, will let the backup complete, and try installing and launching again - here's hoping......

DopeTech

No updates available in google play store for google drive on either device?

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120651214#Comment_120651214

Nope.....

HeidiHeidi

OMG - it worked this time!!!!!!!!!!! 🍾🤸🎉

Praise the Lord!!!

I have no idea what I did differently - apart from uninstalling and reinstalling, but I wouldn't have thought that was necessary - but clearly it was!

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone for all your help and advice and patience with this luddite!

Now..... anyone have any suggestion for funky, maritime-themed covers for an S23???

(only joking!)

Flinty997

Turn it on and off again I guess.

Try the disappearing messages at least on some of the chats. So it doesn't build up.

magicbastarder

i have spent several hours over the last two days tearing my hair out trying to get this done for my wife; seems the process is not as robust as whatsapp would have you believe. firstly, the connection to google drive was broken, and it couldn't back up from the old phone. removed permissions in google drive, tried reconnecting, no joy. there's not much else you can do - you can't remove your google account in whatsapp itself once it's set up.

in theory, there's the 'transfer chat between phones' option, but the vast majority of the time, the instant you activated whatsapp on the new phone, it logged you out of the old phone instantly without giving you the transfer option; and the twice it did gve you the option, it then complained of no internet access (despite a healthy wi-fi connection - seems other users online have complained of this also).

in the end, the backup to google drive just randomly seems to have fixed itself, got the job done.

Flinty997

Works better if you cleanup and delete old chats. WhatsApp storage can be enormous.