Learn It Step By Step

Are you tired of scrolling through a Facebook conversation in order to get to the beginning of a conversation. Think about a long , years old conversation with thousands of messages. You simply cannot do it.  We have seen lot of people asking this very question in the Facebook help center . However no one seems to have the answer to this question. But After some research and testing we found a method to go to the beginning of a Facebook conversation very easily.

There are lot of questions regarding Facebook features , Specially the functions of Facebook messenger .There also Answers to most of these questions in the Facebook Help  Center page . There are some questions that are not yet answered. One of the most asked question is “how to scroll up to the beginning of a conversation in Facebook ?” or “How to see the fist message of a Facebook conversation ?”  . The short answer given is “You have to use the scroll wheel of your mouse” .This answer can be applied to a small Facebook conversation. But ,For a long conversation  , This is almost impossible . After a while your browser will crash or you will get a pop-up saying they a web page slowing your web browser. Scrolling through Facebook messenger is a time consuming and painful thing to do.

Facebook doesn’t provide any tool to go to the beginning of your messages .There is no simple button that take you to the first Facebook message in a conversation .But , There are alternative methods to pull this out . Our method involves downloading a copy of your Facebook Data and opening that file in your web browser . Here is the step by step guide how to go to the beginning of a Facebook conversation.

How to go to The  Beginning of a Facebook conversation

Log in to your Facebook account and in the home page click on the drop down icon (▼)  at the top-right corner . Select “Settings and Privacy” from the drop down menu.

In the “Settings & Privacy” drop down menu select “⚙ Settings” option. Which will take you to the Facebook settings page.

In the Facebook settings page click on “Your Facebook Information” in the left side of the window. Which will take you to the   .

In the “Your Facebook Information” page click on “Download Your Information“. Which will take you to the “Download Your Information” page .

In the Download Your Information page click on “Deselect All” , Which will uncheck every item in the list of things you wants to download.

Now scroll down , click and check “Messages” .Then Press the “Home” button of your keyboard or scroll up to the top of the page.

Selecting The Date

We are about to download the messages . If you can remember the range of dates (start date & end date )of the conversation you can filter out lot of unwanted messages and you can reduce the file size that about to download.

If you have decided the start date and the end date .
Start date – You don’t want to know the exact date , You can guess a day , before the day you started your conversation . One of the way to guess the first day of the conversation is the day you become someones friend Here is how to know the day you become someones friend in Facebook .
End date  –  You don’t want all the messages , Specially recent messages. E.g- You can filter out the conversation happen in this year.
If you cant decide the start date and the end date , leave it as “All of my data” .

If you wants to reduce the file size further , Click on Media Quality drop down menu and select Low option.

Click on “Date Range” and select the date that you wants in the first calendar (First calendar) and the day after that in the second calendar  (Right side) .If you cant decide the date range there is only one option , It’s download all the messages .To download all the messages  Click on All of my data button at the bottom left of the date range calendar .Click “OK” .Then click on “Create File” button .

Wait until you receive a notification from Facebook stating “Your Facebook Information file is ready to download” . Click on it or visit your Archives Here.

Locate the first or the correct download file from the list .Click on Download .Facebook will ask you for your password . Type your password and  click “Submit” .Your file will start downloading . Click save file if your browser ask you about downloading the file.

Go to the downloaded .zip file location and right click on the file and select Extract All or Extract , Choose a location by clicking on “Browse” button. Click on Extract . If you have WinrRar installed in your system right click on the file and select “Extract Here” to extract the files in the same location.

If  you are using a apple PC . The process is same to open the “.zip” file . Double click on the downloaded zip file and open it .Then , You can access the “.html” file . But , In older versions of mac OS you need a third party software to unzip or extract the zip file content . You can download and install WINZIP in such case .

locate the extracted files and double click on the “Index.html” . Which will open in the web browser .Click on “Your Messages”  and select the contact that you want to see the messages from. That’s it , Now you can see the conversation start date to end date in a single page . Easy to read no loading required .

Conclusion

Facebook doesn’t provide any easy method to go the top or the beginning of a conversation but scrolling. The best and quickest way to go to the beginning of a Facebook conversation is by downloading a copy of your messages and open it on a web browser .Then , you can go to the beginning of the conversation with a one click on the scroll bar. You can also keep this file for future reference .This method is fast and convenient. Make sure to use filters in order to reduce the file size as we have mentioned in the selecting the date section . This also reduce the time it take to create a copy of the messages you request . Whether you like or not this is the only way to go to a beginning of a Facebook conversation. Hopefully Facebook will come up with a feature to go to the beginning of a Facebook conversation in future updates.

• Is there any other method to go to the beginning of a Facebook messenger conversation ?.

  Unfortunately , Only other method is the manually scrolling through messages .Other than that , We were not able to find such method . However , We will update this article in such case.

• Can you do the same in Mac OS ?

  Sure , You can follow the same steps . Only the .zip file extract section is different in the Mac OS .

• What would be the file size ?

  The file size depends on the amount of messages that you are downloading . If you have any concern about the file size , Use the date filters to reduce the amount of messages that you have to download. If you wants to reduce the Facebook backup file , keep the date range to a minimum .

• Is there any limitations ?

  No , There is no limitation . Since Facebook keep all the messages you sent and receive unless you manually delete them. You can go the the beginning of a Facebook conversation . It doesn’t matter how old the conversation is .

• Does this affect my Facebook message history ?

  No , This process does not erase ,edit or add any messages to your Facebook messages . It just download a copy of your messages .

• What if the person at the other end deleted messages ?

  If that person deleted the conversation all together or If the other person deleted a specific message for that person only . Using the “Remove for you” option .You will still be able to go download the conversation and read the messages sent and received . But , If the other person deleted a specific message for everyone . Using the “Unsent for everyone” option .Then , You wont be able to read those messages in that conversation. You will see a “This message was unsent” message in the place of that message .

Disclaimer – The content of this article may change over the time . The method that we used to go to the beginning of Facebook conversation in this article may or may not work in future . Because , Facebook platform changes all the time . The options and menus may relocated as the Facebook layout changes . In such case please google to find the specific menus and options  in Facebook .  This Tutorial does not involves any illegal activities nor encourages to do such . All the actions that preformed in this tutorial are totally complies with the TOS of  Facebook platform .

Author : Janaka Jayathilake
08/11/2020