Sometimes when we want to relive memories with a person, we read their chats. It sends us down a trip of nostalgia. However, to start that trip, we have to get the first message. One might think that it should be an easy task, i.e. pressing a button will do the job.
Everything else is in the real world – or should I say the online world. Unlike seeing your first liked post on Instagram, if you have to read old messages from scratch, you’ll have to scroll for hours to get to the first one. Nobody wants that. Then how does one reach the top?
Well, that’s what we’re going to tell you here. What are you waiting for, check out the Instagram first message approach
Quickly scroll to the top of the message thread
Without raising your expectations, let me get this straight. There is no direct way to quickly scroll to the top in Instagram Direct Messages (DM). Luckily, you can read your Instagram messages right from the start. To do that, you’ll need to download the Instagram data in JSON format and convert the JSON messages into a readable format.
Here are the detailed steps.
Download Instagram data
You will require your computer to download Instagram data as this feature is not available for the mobile app.
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Open the Instagram website on your PC through any browser and log in with your credentials. On the Instagram home page, click the profile icon at the top.
Step 2: On your profile page, click the settings gear icon present next to Edit Profile. From the pop-up that appears, click Privacy and Security.
Step 3: Scroll down in the Privacy & Security page and click Download Requests included in Download Data.
Step 4: Your email id will be pre-filled. Press the Next button.
Step 5: You will be asked to enter your password. Do that and hit the Request Download button. That’s it. Now sit back and wait for the email from Instagram. If you encounter any problems while downloading data, check out our detailed instructions.
Note:
View downloaded data on Instagram
Data downloaded from Instagram will be in ZIP format. Download the ZIP file on your PC and extract it. Your PC will create a new folder with the same name as the ZIP file. Open it up. You will find many photo and video folders containing files in JSON format.
Note:
If you notice, you will have a live folder and a message file. The live folder contains all your photos and videos sent/received via Direct Messages (DM). However, at this point we are interested in the messages file.
You can open a JSON file with Notepad. And if you do, the data won’t mean anything especially if your inbox is overcrowded. So we need to convert the message file into an easy to read format.
Convert JSON JSON to human readable format
There are three ways to decode JSON data.
1. View in tree structure
Open the message.json file in notepad and copy all the data. Now visit any website that displays JSON data in an extensible tree structure. I have tried JSONViewer and it works fine.
Open the web page and paste the data you copied above into the Text tab. Then click the Viewer tab present next to the Text tab.
You’ll see many items with a plus icon next to them. Click the icon to display data including participants and conversations. Find participants whose messages you want to read in the first place.
Once you’ve found the right person, right-click the conversation option and select Expand All from the menu.
All items in the chat will open. Scroll down and you will be able to check the first message.
2. Convert JSON to CSV format
Another way to view and read JSON is to convert it to a CSV file. For that, open the aconvert.com website and click Choose File. Navigate to the messages.json file contained in the Instagram folder. Make sure the destination format is CSV. Then click Convert Now.
Wait for the data to convert. You will find the CSV file in the Conversion Results. Right click on the file and select ‘Save Link As’ to download the file to your PC.
Now open the downloaded file in Excel. You will find all your messages here. To make them easier to read, we will extract the row containing the necessary messages.
Extract messages
Step 1: Click the New Sheet icon at the bottom of Excel to add the sheet to the previously downloaded Excel file.
Step 2: Open the first page again and find the person whose direct message you want to read from the beginning. Select and copy that row and the first row containing the header.
Step 3: Go to the second sheet and right click on the first empty cell. From the menu, select Current Transposition in Paste Options. You’ll see that the columns have been converted to rows making it easy to read the message.
3. View in PDF
If you don’t like the CSV format, you can also convert the message to PDF. To do that, save the newly created Excel sheet (table with converted data) in PDF format. To do so, go to File > Save As. Select PDF from the drop-down box.
Does Instagram data download include deleted messages
Are not. Downloaded data will not contain your deleted messages.
Patience is the key to success
This method may look long and intimidating, but it is not. You just have to be a little patient and then follow our instructions.
Let us know if you’re familiar with another way to read messages from scratch on Instagram.
Next up: Wondering how to make your Instagram stories better? Check out these helpful tips.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
