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I followed the steps below to restore WhatsApp chats:

  1. On my old phone, I backed up my chats to an SD card
  2. Insert the SD card into the new phone
  3. Moved the whole WhatsApp folder to the new phone from the SD card
  4. Install WhatsApp on a new phone and register and then it said there is a backup file found, asked if I would like to restore it.
  5. I clicked restore, so WhatsApp processes.... for around 1-2 minutes, WhatsApp quits itself, prompt "Unfortunately, WhatsApp has stopped"

The WhatsApp version on both my old and new phone is the same.

So how can I restore my chat history?

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  • I have the same problem except that WhatsApp doesn't even detect my backed up messages! No restore option is shown when I install WhatsApp.
    – Akas Antony
    Commented Sep 8, 2013 at 14:31
  • Make sure that your phone is in airplane mode. Sometimes that will work.
    – Dinesh
    Commented Nov 6, 2015 at 19:44

4 Answers 4

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Try this, from the Whatsapp FAQ.

To restore from a backup, follow these steps:

  1. Uninstall WhatsApp.
  2. Decide which backup file you want to restore.
  3. Rename that file from "msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt" to "msgstore.db.crypt"
  4. Install WhatsApp
  5. When asked to restore, tap [Restore]
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  • thanks for the answer... but nope... didn't help...
    – MW_hk
    Commented Sep 5, 2013 at 16:35
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When you put the backup file onto your new phone, make sure you put it in the WhatsApp folder that is located on your phone and not the SD card in your new phone. There are 2 WhatsApp folders, one on your phone and one on the SD card, so make sure you put the backup onto your new phone because I kept putting it in the SD card folder and it didn't work.

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  • 1
    This worked as well for me. No idea why WhatsApp does not consider the SD card folder anymore.
    – Simon A. Eugster
    Commented Mar 7, 2015 at 7:56
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The file name in the Whatsapp/Database/ folder should be msgstore.db.crypt. If it has a date, etc. then rename it to msgstore.db.crypt only. In my case, it was msgstore.db.crypt8. I rename it msgstore.db.crypt and it worked.

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Apparently, there are issues with the restore when you use a different phone number. I could not completely figure out what caused the problems in my case, but I was finally able to restore my data when I used the same cell phone number for activation (I have a dual SIM phone) as I used on my old phone.

So, I guess the bottom line is:

  1. Use the same Google account ("@gmail" vs "@googlemail")
  2. Use the same cell phone number
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