How to Open and Read an Exported WhatsApp Chat

By Josep Mampel Marques, updated November 9, 2026

An exported WhatsApp chat is a plain text file, so any text editor can open it, but it reads as a wall of timestamps with no photos. To read it as a conversation, open the .zip or .txt in a viewer such as PrintChats: it shows the messages as chat bubbles with photos, day separators, search and a date filter, and it runs in your browser without uploading the file. WhatsApp itself cannot open the export again, because it is not a backup (see can you import an exported WhatsApp chat).

Option 1: open it in PrintChats (bubbles, photos, search)

1. Export the chat from your phone and save the file where you can reach it. See iPhone or Android steps.
2. Open PrintChats on the phone or on a computer.
3. Choose the file under Choose your WhatsApp export (.zip or .txt), or drag it onto that box on a computer. Use the .zip if you have it, so the photos show up.
4. Pick your own name in I am. Your messages move to the right, like in WhatsApp.
5. Type in Search to find a word or a name, or set From and To to show only part of the chat. A counter shows how many messages match. Tips in search a WhatsApp chat by date or keyword.
6. When you want a copy you can keep or share, tap Save as PDF. The steps are in how to print a WhatsApp chat.

PrintChats understands the formats produced by both iPhone and Android, day-first and month-first dates, 12 and 24 hour clocks, messages that span several lines and system messages. Photos inside a .zip appear in the bubbles. Videos, audio and documents are listed as links you can open. When the chat was exported without media, a placeholder marks where each file was.

Option 2: a text editor

If you only need to glance at the text, a text editor works on any device.

1. If you have a .zip, extract it first. On iPhone, tapping a .zip in the Files app extracts it. On Windows, right-click and choose Extract All. On a Mac, double-click it.
2. Open _chat.txt (iPhone exports) or the WhatsApp Chat with ...txt file (Android exports) with Notes, Notepad, TextEdit or any editor.
3. Use the editor's Find command to search for words.

Limitations: photos are only file names, every line starts with a date, long chats are slow to scroll and you cannot filter by date. If accents or emoji show as strange symbols, the editor is not reading the file as UTF-8; most modern editors handle it, and PrintChats always does.

Option 3: a spreadsheet

Some people paste the text into a spreadsheet to sort or count messages. It works for short chats, but multi-line messages break into separate rows and dates are not split into columns automatically. For reading, a chat viewer is easier. For analysis, export the text and clean it first.

Reading the raw format

If you do read the text directly, this is how a line is built (examples from each platform):

• [15/01/2024, 21:41:45] Ana: See you tomorrow on iPhone
• 15/01/2024, 21:41 - Ana: See you tomorrow on Android

Date, time, sender, colon, text. Lines that do not start with a date belong to the previous message. Lines with a date but no sender are system messages, such as the encryption notice or someone joining a group. The full breakdown, including how photos are named, is in what is inside a WhatsApp export zip.

Privacy

A chat export often contains other people's messages, phone numbers and photos. Online converters that ask you to upload the file get a full copy of all of that. PrintChats never uploads it: the file is read in the browser tab, nothing is stored on a server, and closing the tab clears it. Whatever tool you use, keep the export file somewhere private and delete copies you no longer need.