Export and Print WhatsApp Chats and Attachments from iPhone

Like Messages, WhatsApp chats can contain anything from special personal memories to crucial evidence which could help win a court case. The problem is that WhatsApp doesn't allow for messages and attachments to be easily exported, be it on iPhone or the desktop app. This makes extracting your WhatsApp data a tedious task at best.

iMazing offers any easy solution for viewing, saving and printing WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business messages on both Mac and Windows PC. You will be able to:

• Print or Export your WhatsApp messages to PDF, text, Excel or CSV and store them on your Mac or PC
• Save WhatsApp photos, videos and all attachments to your Mac or PC, in bulk
• Save, Print and Export WhatsApp Business chats

💡 Tip: be sure to visit this guide if you specifically need to print WhatsApp chats for court

Here's how to export your WhatsApp messages to Mac or PC

1. Launch iMazing on your computer
2. From iMazing's Discover view, select WhatsApp
3. Connect your device to your Mac or PC via USB
4. Select your device
5. Select backup options
6. Choose messages or conversations to be exported
7. Click Export button to choose a file format
8. Review export options
9. Choose a location and save the file on your computer

Before you begin

Always make sure you are running the latest iMazing version, to do so select Check for Updates from the iMazing menu, or just download the latest available version for your computer below.

Download and install iMazing on your Mac or PC computer.

Step-by-step instructions

To print or export your WhatsApp messages:

1. Launch iMazing on your computer

Download and install iMazing. For more details please refer to our guide available for PC and for Mac.

2. From iMazing's Discover view, select WhatsApp

The first item, in the top left corner of iMazing is the Discover view. Make sure it is selected. In the main window, look for the Media and Communications section and click WhatsApp.

3. Connect your device to your Mac or PC via USB

iMazing will prompt you to connect the device to your computer on the first time you're using it. To do so use a USB cable, and unlock the device using your passcode, Face ID or Touch ID, and follow the instructions for pairing.

💡 Tip: For more details on connections and pairing refer to this guide.

4. Select your device

iMazing will now display all available devices from which messages can be exported to your computer. Click the one you wish to select to begin.

5. Select backup options

iMazing needs to proceed to a backup to extract data. You can now decide if you want a full restorable backup of the device or only need to access the messages and conversations only. The first option uses less storage, the second is restorable.

Click the Start button to launch the operation, you will be prompted to enter the passcode on the device.

❗ Important: The first time a device is being accessed by iMazing the process will take a while, up to one hour or more, so please be patient.

💡 Tip: Learn more about data access and full backup options.

If there is a preexisting backup of the device, the previous screen will not be displayed and instead you will be be asked if you want to use this existing backup, or perform a subsequent backup to refresh the contents.

💡 Tips:

• Subsequent backups are incremental and much quicker!
• Learn more about backup snapshots.
• You can always request iMazing to make a newer backup with the Refresh button (the circular arrow) in the top navigation bar.

iMazing loads all WhatsApp messages in the main window.

6. Choose messages or conversations to be exported

When you select a conversation in the left column, you'll see it's corresponding messages and attachments displayed. If you only want to save certain messages, select them now. If you need to export multiple conversations in bulk, you can select them now too.

💡 Tips:

• To select all items in the list of chats or messages, simply select one item, then hold the CTRL key (Windows) or Command key (Mac) and press A.
• To select non-contiguous items, hold the CTRL key (Windows) or Command key (Mac), and then click each item.
• To select multiple sequential items, click one item, scroll down, and select another one while holding the Shift key.

You can select as many messages or conversations as you want in this way.

7. Click Export button to choose a file format

Click the Export button at the bottom right of the iMazing window and select the desired file format.

8. Review export options

iMazing will now give you the option to customize your output. Default settings are usually adequate. You can refer to Export Options below for more details. Here's what the PDF export options window looks like:

9. Choose a location and save the file on your computer

iMazing then displays a dialog asking you where you want to save the exported messages: Select a location, change the file name if needed, then click Choose on macOS or Save on Windows. iMazing generates and saves the file, and you can then read these messages in the format you've chosen, or import them into other apps.

💡 Drag-and-Drop! for ultra quick workflows, you can simply drag a whole conversation or a selection of messages to any location on your Mac or PC. If your selection only contains attachments, you'll export the raw attachments. In all other cases, iMazing will generate a PDF file with default export options. And if you drag and drop to a text editor directly, you'll get a raw text export.

Saving Attachments

You can easily drag and drop any attachment from iMazing to your desktop. But you can also just as easily export all attachments of selected chats, here's how:

1. Select the chats you wish to export attachments from
   You can select as many chats as you want from the Chats list in iMazing. Hold the command or control key to add a chat to your current selection.
2. Click Export Attachments in the bottom toolbar
3. Navigate to your target folder, and confirm by clicking Choose

Exported attachments include photos, videos, audio messages, contacts (as vCards), locations (as links to Google Maps), shared links, and all kinds of attached files and documents.

Export Options

iMazing offers 4 different formats in which to export WhatsApp data:

1. Export to PDF is a good choice to digitally archive and share chats
2. Export to CSV is great to recover actionable data which you can easily import in a spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers...)
3. Export to Text is less commonly used, but very useful to get a human readable pure text output

Each of these export formats can be customized. Simply click the corresponding button and iMazing will display format-specific export options for you to review.

PDF Export and Print Options

The PDF Export Options window offers the following settings:

• Paper size and orientation
• Scale can be used to adjust the size of the font and of images. The range extends from 30% to 300%.
• Margins
• Add chat session name in header
• Add page numbers in footer
• Add export metadata in footer is useful to give increased legal weight to exported messages. The footer of every page will include the iPhone's name and serial number, the date of the export, and the last modified date of the WhatsApp database from which the data was exported.

Print options are identical to the options available in the Export to PDF window, with the added possibility to choose a printer.

CSV Export Options

iMazing's powerful CSV exports let you easily import messaging data in an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet for further analysis. After exporting to CSV, simply launch the spreadsheet program of your choice and look for Import from CSV options.

There are 2 optional settings in iMazing's message to CSV exports:

• Include header row is enabled by default. Disable to export the data without including column names. This is useful for appending data to an existing spreadsheet.
• Include chat session name is also enabled by default. Having the chat session name is needed to identify a specific chat if you aggregate multiple chats together in a spreadsheet.

💡 Pro Tip: to see a full timeline of messaging data, you can select all chats, export to CSV, and then import the file in a spreadsheet. Sorting by sent date will give you an accurate timeline of all messaging activity.

Text Export Options

Exports in text format can be customized in detail to output just the content you need. By default, the following types of information are included:

• The chat session name
• The sender name of each message
• The date and time of each message
• The status of the message - wether it is sent, delivered or read
• Attachment information like web addresses or GPS coordinates
• Notifications - if a participant's name has been changed or if they have joined or left a conversation
• Adding a separator between messages to improve readability

WhatsApp Business

iMazing fully supports both WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business, and the exact same features are available for both apps. iMazing will recognize whether you have WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business installed, and show the appropriate icon. If you have both installed, iMazing will display both – simply click on the one you'd like to browse and export messages from.

Going further

Searching and Filtering

iMazing's WhatsApp view offers date range filters and text search fields designed to help you find and recover content quickly.

• The date range picker lets you focus on a specific time period. Only messages and chats from the selected timeframe will be displayed and exported.
• The content search field at the top of iMazing's window which you can use to search for a specific word in your entire WhatsApp chat history.
• The chat session search bar under the list of chats in which you can type a participant's name to easily find all conversations in which that person participated, even chats from which the person left.

These filters can be combined too. And if you need to place a specific message you found in it's original context, simply select it and clear the search filter; iMazing will preserve your selection and put it back in its original context. Handy!