WhatsApp - how to change email used for emailing a group of messages 13 November 2022 at 2:51PM in Techie Stuff 3 replies 111 views

lr1277

Hi. I am hoping you can help with the following.

My dad had a phone on which WhatsApp was installed. For some reason the email account he provided was one that he didn’t use often.
My mum has since taken over the phone with the same number. However on trying to forward a group of messages to an email address, they did not arrive. This is when I found the account was linked to an email address that won’t be used going forward. Whether the email is active or not is unknown at this moment.

I am trying to change the sending email address to one actively used by mum.
The internet suggests using 2 step verification. That is one can of worms i don’t want to open.

Any suggestions for making this change without using 2 step verification?

In the interests of full disclosure:
Dad’s phone was a Samsung. The email was a gmail account.
When the Samsung started misbehaving, it was replaced with an iPhone SE. A technical support person at John Lewis transferred the email and WhatsApp over from the Samsung to the iPhone.
Mum’s email is a gmail account.

I am hoping by fixing the email used by WhatsApp will fix not being able to forward WhatsApp messages to an email address.

Thanks in advance.

flaneurs_lobster

A WhatsApp account is associated with a particular mobile phone number. You can add an email address (it's used to recover the account if the pin or phone are lost). You can also add details of the account where chats etc may be backed up to. On an Android phone these are often the Google email and account associated with the phone. 

When the account was moved from the Samsung to the Apple was the backup moved to iCloud or was it set to remain on Google Drive? 

 Are you trying to preserve/download the historical WhatsApp messages associated with the account? You mention trying to forward WhatsApp messages to an email address, it doesn't work like that. All messages are exchanged between accounts which means between phone numbers. 

lr1277

Reading the internet I think it said it might be possible to move messages from Android to iOS but you would need to install an app. As dad couldn’t remember his passwords and I am not knowledgeable about Android I chose not to do that.
Mum also was happy not having any chat history. So I think it was a vanilla transfer. No messages were transferred.

I want the current messages kept.

On my iPhone. I can select a message, then select forward. I can then select which messages to forward by clicking on each individual message. Then I can choose how I forward the message: SMS text, WhatsApp or email.
If I choose email, then the iOS new email window opens, with the text of the selected messages. I enter the recipient’s email address and subject then send.
If memory serves, the iOS email app is set to mum’s current email as the sender. However when selecting email forwarding in WhatsApp, dad’s little used email address shows as the sender.
I could recheck the email settings for the iOS email app, but that will have to be later this week when I next visit mum.

Are there any other things I could try?

Thanks.

lr1277

Update:

Had a chance to check mum's phone. There were 2 email accounts associated with the iphone mail app in Settings->mail->accounts. First was dad's unused account and the 2nd was mum's active account. Dad's account was higher up the list of accounts, if that makes a difference.

There was also some kind of message that the iphone was having some kind of difficulty connecting to dad's unused account.

I deleted dad's unused account from the list of accounts available to the iphone email app. Now forwarding whatsapp messages by email seems to work with mum's active account.