Turn a WhatsApp chat into a PDF or a book

People want a chat on paper for two very different reasons. Either it is a keepsake — a year of messages with someone, bound and put on a shelf — or it is a record, something that needs to exist outside an app on a phone that could be lost tomorrow.

Both end at the same place: a PDF. Getting there is more fiddly than it should be, and the route you pick decides whether the photos come with it.

Route 1: the free route, with an export

This works on any phone and costs nothing.

1. In WhatsApp, open the chat, then More → Export chat (Android) or the chat name → Export Chat (iPhone). Choose Without media — you are printing text.
2. Move the .txt to a computer.
3. Open it in a word processor.
4. Print, and choose Save as PDF as the destination.

What you get is honest but plain: a wall of monospaced lines, each starting with a date, a time and a name. No bubbles, no distinction between you and them, and every photo replaced by <Media omitted>. On top of that, the export includes only the most recent 40,000 messages without media, or 10,000 with — silently, with nothing in the file to say it was cut.

For a short conversation this is completely fine and you should stop here. For a long one it produces a document that is hard to read and quietly incomplete.

Route 2: keeping the layout and the photos

The alternative is to import the chat into a reader that lays it out properly and print from there. In WaChat Web that is Print or export in the chat menu, or Ctrl + P.

The dialog offers a set of formats, and they are not interchangeable:

Alongside the format you can set:

• Date range — from and to, or the entire chat.
• Include media — PDF and HTML embed the photos; the ZIP carries all the files.
• A header with the chat name and date on each page.
• Page numbers.

The dialog estimates the page count before you commit, which is the number that decides whether you are printing a booklet or a shelf.

To be clear about what costs money: TXT and PDF without media are free. PDF with media, HTML, CSV and JSON are part of Plus. If you only need the text of a conversation as a PDF, the free tier does that, for a complete chat, without a message cap.

The thing a PDF cannot do

A PDF is paper. It holds text and images and nothing else.

That means voice notes cannot be printed. In a printed chat they appear as what they are — an entry showing a voice message and its place in the conversation — but the audio itself is not in the document. Videos are the same.

If the recordings are the part you actually care about, export the ZIP as well and keep it alongside the PDF. The ZIP contains every media file, audio included. Print the PDF for the shelf; keep the ZIP for the things that need to be heard.

Making a book out of it

If the goal is something bound rather than a file, a few practical things make the difference between a nice object and 900 pages of unreadable margin.

Split by year. Use the date range and export one PDF per year. A multi-year chat as a single volume is unbindable and unpleasant to read. One year per volume also gives each book a natural cover.

Check the page estimate before you export. A busy group chat produces far more pages than people expect. If a year comes out at several hundred pages, split by half-year instead.

Decide on media before you print. Photos make the book, but they also multiply the page count and the printing cost. A reasonable middle path is one volume with everything for the year that matters most, and text-only volumes for the rest.

Include the header and page numbers. They cost nothing and they turn a stack of pages into something you can navigate.

Print at the size you will actually read. Photo-book services and normal print shops both accept a PDF. A5 suits a keepsake; A4 suits a reference document. Leave a wider inside margin than feels necessary — binding eats it.

Proof one volume first. Print a single year, look at it, then order the rest. Something is always slightly off on the first attempt.

There is also a ready-made version of this idea: the yearbook under Memories, which builds a PDF from a year of a conversation as a designed book rather than a transcript. It is part of Plus, and it is a different thing from the print dialog — a highlights book rather than a complete record. For a complete record, use the print dialog.

Which route to take

A note on chats as evidence

A lot of people print conversations for a dispute — a landlord, an employer, a contract. Two honest points.

First, we make no claim about whether any output is admissible anywhere. That depends on the jurisdiction and the case, and it is a question for a lawyer, not for a file format.

Second, whatever you produce, produce it completely. A truncated export that starts halfway through the relevant month is worse than useless. If the conversation matters enough to print, it matters enough to check that the beginning is actually in it — which, for anything longer than the export caps, means importing the backup rather than the export.

Where to go from here

For a short conversation, exporting without media and printing to PDF is free and takes five minutes. For a long one, or one where the photos matter, import the chat first and print from there — with a date range, a header and page numbers, split into volumes if you are having it bound. Keep a ZIP alongside for anything that has to be heard rather than read.

• The export steps in full: exporting a chat from WhatsApp.
• What is free and what is not: free vs WaChat Plus.
• Getting a complete chat in first: the import guide.