Find Your Facebook Chat History

It's really easy to find your Facebook chat history. While your favorite social network does not have an official history section where all your messages are stored, there is a pretty simple way to find the history logs for specific messages, and search through them.

You can also see your archived Facebook messages through a similar process, but those texts are hidden away in a different menu.

How to Look Through Facebook Chat History

The history of all of your Facebook instant messages is stored within each thread or conversation.

1. On Facebook, click Messages at the top of the page, near your profile and "Home" link.
2. Click the message that you want the history for.
3. That specific thread will open at the bottom of Facebook, where you can scroll up and down through the past messages.

For more options, click the small gear icon next to the exit button on that conversation so that you can:

• Copy text out of the messages, add other friends to the conversation, delete the whole conversation or block the user.
• Choose Open in Messenger to make the whole conversation fill the Facebook page and have the option to search through the old Facebook messages.

Note: The "Open in Messenger" screen looks identical to how you can see Facebook chat history from Messenger.com. If you'd rather, you can avoid going through Facebook.com and instead jump right into Messenger.com to do the exact same thing.

How to Download All Your Facebook Chat History

Sometimes, just looking through your chat logs online isn't enough.

If you want an actual copy of your Facebook history logs that you can back up yourself, send to someone or do whatever with, follow these simple steps:

1. Open your General Account Settings page through the small arrow at the far right side of the top Facebook menu, and choose Settings.
2. At the very bottom of that page is a sentence that you should click. It reads Download a copy of your Facebook data.

1. On that Download Your Information page, choose Start My Archive.
2. If asked, enter your Facebook password in the prompt and then click Submit.
3. Choose Start My Archive to start the process.
4. Click Okay to exit the Download Requested prompt.

Facebook will give you tons of your information, including not just chat conversations but also all your shared posts, photos and videos. This whole gathering process might take a while but you'll get an email when it's ready for download.