How do you delete a section of messages on WhatsApp (for both sides)?

[LemonDrizzle72]

Hi,

Noticed this has happened to me with one of my chats. A conversation (from one whole day) has been deleted and this includes what both of us said. Well over twenty messages between us. The chat is still there from before this day and after. There also isn't a message where the missing messages to say 'message deleted' like you get when you delete individual messages. Usually, you cant delete what the other person has said. So, for messages from both of us (over a full day) is unusual. I didn't know you could do this on Whatsapp.

Anyone know how? I'm intrigued. Can't find anything in the help section.

Need to know before I ask the person what they deleted them for.

You didn't change phones at the time did you? Only had this happen once when I hadn't backed up what's app and swapped phones and lost couple days worth of chat.

You can set disappearing messages to kick in within a set period, from 24 hours to a few weeks from the day you activate it. I do it for people I work with but tell them first

No, same phone

Yeah, but that would delete the entire chat though. This is just a section from within a chat that's missing.

I had this happen, it was an issue with my WhatsApp message back up we think. The messages were still showing for the other person (I asked them, they showed me them on their phone)

The message about 'this chat is now end-to-end encrypted came up so maybe it's deleted some messages doing that. Who knows?

The other person can’t delete your sent messages from your phone, so they won’t have deleted it.

Why has your first thought been that they are guilty of deletion, rather than there being a technical explanation?

Maybe they turned on the dissappearing messages feature and then off again?

One of you could have turned on disappearing messages by mistake, only the messages sent after it's turned on will disappear. Or it's an issue with your daily backup, something's gone wrong / crashed, phone ran out of space etc. You could check when your last backup was, and there's the option to restore everything if you uninstall WhatsApp then reinstall again.

If it's just one day's messages though and new ones are appearing fine now, then I'd just check neither of you has disappearing messages turned on, (or that it was turned on then off again) and if not then it was probably just an issue with that day's backup.

It's work related and was something to do with an investigation about something

Is it work related, I mean?