Guides

How to export Telegram chat history and turn it into a book

Export a Telegram chat with Telegram Desktop, save the right file, and turn the conversation into a book you can actually revisit.

Joshua Z

Founder, My Forever Books

Telegram chats hold a lot of ordinary life: long-distance updates, travel plans, late-night talks, group jokes, and messages you never thought you would need to save. If you want to export a Telegram chat, the trick is choosing the version that still feels usable once it is off the app.

If you already have the export ready, you can start your Telegram book now. If not, the steps below walk you through the export from the beginning.

Table of contents

1. Why export Telegram chat history?
2. What Telegram export file you need
3. Step-by-step guide
4. Tips for a better Telegram book
5. FAQs

Why export Telegram chat history?

Telegram makes it easy to assume a conversation will always be there. Then time passes, devices change, and a chat that once felt close starts living behind a login and a search bar. Exporting gives you a clean copy so the conversation is not left to chance.

• Telegram chats often hold years of real life, not just throwaway messages.
• Exporting gives you a copy outside the app before devices, accounts, or habits change.
• A book is much easier to revisit than a folder buried in Downloads.

What Telegram export file you need

Telegram gives you a few choices, but you do not need to overthink it. For My Forever Books, this is the setup to use:

• Use Telegram Desktop, not the app store version if export options are missing.
• Choose JSON.
• Include only the media you want to preserve.
• Compress the exported folder into a .zip before uploading.

That combination uploads cleanly and keeps the chat readable in the editor.

Step-by-step guide

Once you are in Telegram Desktop, the rest is pretty straightforward. You are mostly deciding which chat you want and whether the photos, stickers, and GIFs belong in the version you keep.

1. Install the latest version of Telegram Desktop on your computer.
2. Open the chat you want to preserve.
3. Click the three-dot menu and choose Export chat history.
4. Keep photos, stickers, and GIFs only if they matter to the story.
5. Set the format to JSON.
6. Choose a date range only if you want to.
7. Click Export and wait for Telegram to finish.
8. Compress the export folder into a .zip file.
9. Upload the .zip to My Forever Books and continue designing your book.

Telegram export starts on your computer, but after upload both the book editor and cover editor fully work on mobile too.

You do not need to worry if the export is very long. There are no file limits, and we can split long Telegram chats into neat volumes with the message dates on each project so everything stays easy to follow.

Tips for a better Telegram book

You do not need to tidy everything up before you upload. If the conversation matters, it is usually better to bring in the whole thing first and decide what to trim once you can see it on the page.

• You can upload a full long-running chat without trimming it first.
• There are no file limits, and if the chat is long, we split it into neat volumes for you.
• Projects are labeled by the message dates so long chats stay organized.