What is FaceBook Messenger ?
Facebook Messenger is a messaging app and platform.
Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, and subsequently released standalone iOS and Android apps in August 2011.
You need to be a FaceBook member. Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files, as well as react to other users’ messages and interact with bots. The service also supports voice and video calling.
An alternative for messaging, voice and video calling is WhatsApp (also owned by FaceBook) but neither user needs to have a FaceBook account.
I recently had a client who had a 5 year long FaceBook Messenger chat history with one other person. When I logged into the Messenger account to download the history, all I could get was the past six months of history. After a bit of research I found a Google Chrome Extension called “Message/Chat Downloader“. After a few errors I realised that I had to limit the time frame of conversation before attempting a download. After each download I printed to pdf and landed up with 19 pdf documents – totalling 5,847 pages (containing an exchange 161,071 messages). I then used a free program called PDF Redirect to merge these 19 pdf files into fewer pdf documents to deliver to the client (5,847 pages would not fit into one pdf document).
The client then requested a printout of all 5,847 pages. I then had a problem as the pages were not numbered. I could only find software that would number one pdf document from Page 1 until the end, but because I had multiple pdf files I needed to edit the page number of the first page for the consecutive files. So I signed up for a free one month trial of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC which would allow me to do exactly that.
I found a reasonable printer in Wotton-under-Edge who did the printing for me double sided on A4 paper.
Job Done!
