How to turn a WhatsApp chat into a PDF for translation
By PDFEditor.ae · Published
What you need first
A translator or reviewer needs to refer to exact messages, so a screenshot or a raw text file is hard to work with. A numbered PDF solves that, as long as nothing in the chat is changed along the way. Start from WhatsApp's own export, and keep that file.
Export the chat from WhatsApp
Menus differ between WhatsApp versions, and media may not be available on yours. Disappearing and view-once messages are not exported, according to WhatsApp's help page, so an export may not hold everything that was sent.
- Open the individual or group chat on your phone.
- Open the chat menu and choose Export chat. On some phones it sits under More.
- If WhatsApp offers it, choose whether to attach media.
- Save the file it creates, without opening and re-saving it in another app.
Official source: WhatsApp Help Center: how to export your chat history
Create the numbered PDF
- Open WhatsApp Chat to PDF and choose the .txt or .zip file.
- Check the message count, the first and last dates, and the list of senders.
- If the dates could be read either way, such as 03/04/2026, choose the order your phone uses.
- Choose a date range if only part of the chat is needed, and look through the messages.
- Download the ZIP bundle, which keeps the PDF, an Excel list of messages, the original export and a manifest together.
What the PDF marks for you
- Each message has a number from the whole export, such as M57. Numbers do not change when you choose a date range.
- Messages left out by a date range are noted with their count and numbers.
- Photos, videos and files missing from the export are marked. They are not guessed at or described.
- Deleted-message notices and notices from WhatsApp itself are labelled, so they are not read as a person's words.
- Notes added by the tool are in capitals and square brackets. Everything else comes from the export.
Check before sending
- Compare a few messages with the chat on the phone, especially Arabic text and any phone numbers.
- Compare the first and last messages with the date range you meant to include.
- Look for scripts other than Arabic and Latin, such as Hindi. Those lines are shown as pictures in the PDF, while the Excel file keeps them as text for the translator.
- Ask whoever receives the document what they require. A transcript does not prove that an export is complete or unaltered, and it is not a certified translation.
Next steps
Use the word counter to scope the transcript, then the Document Bundle Builder if it goes with other documents. When the translation is ready, the side-by-side review helps check names, dates and numbers against the original.