iCloud says it backed up, but when trying to restore backup not available?

Hi Gail! Thank you so much for getting back to me.

Unfortunately the issue that happened with Whatsapp meant that I couldn't even open the app - so I couldn't access the Whatsapp settings. But when I entered my iCloud settings on my phone (Settings>iCloud>Storage>Manage Storage>Backups) as you can see below, my Whatsapp is taking up the space (4GB) so one would assume there is some stuff in there.

Now, after I deleted and re-installed Whatsapp after getting my new number, this is what I find in my Whatsapp:

It says I've never backed up but clearly as shown in the first photo there is Whatsapp backup!

Yes, my iCloud Drive is on and I think it was on at the time.

(UPDATE: Tonight I did some snooping around and found a third party app that scans iCloud content for extraction, and tried it on my iCloud backup. It extracted some Whatsapp chats into a strange note with odd characters and old phrases from chats I recognised from my backup! So there is text there from the chat, question is, how do I put it back on my phone)

Thank you, and sorry this is so long again.

Hi Gail. Thanks for your reply, this cleared up a lot of confusion I had.

You're right, it seemed I failed to realise that even though iCloud shows as having Whatsapp stored, the actual app and how successfully (or not) it backed up is responsible.

I had a look at the articles, this is what I found:

Seems like according to what I highlighted above, I need the same SIM card inserted in my phone to be able to restore my chat data on Whatsapp. Because it seems Whatsapp works with, each number has an account, not each phone. Seeing as I have a new number, this would explain the backup not showing up? What do you think?

Number 1 above pretty much confirms that point.

So, so far I've gathered I probably need the same number in order to restore Whatsapp successfully. My old SIM is in the country I was in, so when I get back I'll insert it and try restoring again.

Although - what about in the meantime? I am using Whatsapp right now so does that mean all this new data will be added onto the chat history already present - or will this new chat have to go as soon as I change numbers as well?

Hi Gail,

That's correct, I back up manually. Of course now I regret it considering what happened, I should have backed up way before any of this.

I definitely have enough iCloud storage: I bought the 50GB package, I didn't wanna risk losing that precious history over not having enough space. So my phone's taking up about 6GB (including the 5GB Whatsapp data) of that.

I looked on iCloud Drive, nothing:

Despite there being CLEARLY a lot of space taken up from backed up data on my storage stats in my iCloud settings:

And when I open my Whatsapp files, there are old chats encrypted in a mixture of letters and numbers.

I'm so tired of this. Hopefully my history data is safe, I would be heartbroken if it's gone, but all I can do now is wait to install my old SIM and see if it works out.

Hi Gail,

I agree it is quite weird they link it to the number. Especially considering lots of people change their numbers on a regular basis and this should be taken into account.

No way am I contacting Whatsapp again, their customer service - unlike Apple's which is actually quite decent - is terrible and the best they can do is send a copy and pasted response to every other email they may reply to. No consideration towards any unique cases, they just send you the same programmed article, there isn't even a hotline.

The only hope I'm holding onto right now is I'm sure I did see some lines from an old chat in those encrypted files I extracted from a third party program on my computer, so as long as I can somehow recover those I'm good. I'll just wait till I get back to the country where my SIM is which will be in a month anyway and try recovering.

Question - when iCloud automatically backs up something from your phone since say, yesterday does this override/erase any old iCloud data from an backup there may have been? So say, if iCloud is backing up my current chat history on Drive will it erase the previous data from this old backup I can't restore?

Thank you so much for your attention, sorry if this is dragging too long. I very much have an idea of how curious cats are - I have some of my own! 🙂

Have a good evening.

Hi Gail,

Thanks so much for that explanation, it cleared up a lot. I still don't believe my chat history is entirely gone, because of the parts of it that I found encrypted in those weird files I extracted from my iOS backup. So I'm holding onto that hope until I try restoring from my old SIM.

Thanks for answering all my queries! You've been really helpful.

I'll come back in a month's time and let you know how things worked out.