How to View Archived Facebook and Messenger Messages

Updated December 01, 2019

You can archive messages on Facebook to put them in a different folder, away from the main list of conversations. This helps organize your conversations without deleting them, which is especially helpful if you don't need to message someone but you still want to save the texts.

If you can't find archived Facebook messages, use the appropriate set of instructions below. Remember that Facebook messages can be accessed on both Facebook and Messenger.com.

Archived Messages on Facebook or Messenger

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The quickest way to get to the archived messages is to open this link for Facebook.com messages, or this one for Messenger.com. Either will take you directly to the archived messages.

Or, you can follow these steps to manually open your archived messages (Messenger.com users can skip down to Step 3):

For Facebook.com users, open Messages. It's at the top of Facebook on the same menu bar as your profile name.
Select See All in Messenger at the bottom of the message window.
Select the Settings gear icon in the upper-left corner of the Messenger window.
Select Archived Chats. All archived messages will appear in the left pane.

You can unarchive Facebook messages by just sending another message to that recipient. It will show up again in the main list of messages along with any other messages that aren't archived.

Archived Messages on a Mobile Device

You can get to your archived messages from the mobile version of Facebook too. From your browser, either open the Messages page or do this:

Open Messenger.
Tap the search bar at the top of the screen and type the name of the person you want to view messages for.
Select the friend whose messages you want to see from the search results and then you'll see all of the messages from that person.

How to Search Through Archived Facebook Messages

Once you have an archived message open in Facebook.com or Messenger.com, it's really easy to search for a specific keyword with that thread:

You can search in any opened Facebook message, not just Archived ones.

Look for the Options panel on the right side of the page, just under the recipient's profile picture.
Select Search in Conversations.
Use the text box at the top of the message to enter specific words in that conversation, using the leftmost arrow keys (next to the search box) to see the previous/next instance of the word.

If you're using Facebook's mobile website from your phone or tablet, you can't search through the conversations themselves but you can search for a person's name from the list of conversation threads. For example, you can search "Henry" to find archived messages to Henry but you can't search for certain words you and Henry sent each other.