Maybe you’ve got a new phone and tried to restore your WhatsApp messages to it using WhatsApps guide on how to restore messages from Google Drive, but when you got to the all important restore step, WhatsApp told you there were no backups found.
One reason this can happen is that you originally set WhatsApp up on a different phone number. Maybe you were travelling and had an overseas SIM card. As long as you stay on the same phone, you can change the SIM card and phone number and WhatsApp will happily keep delivering messages to your account. But that account is still attached to the old phone number you had before.
If you get a new phone, move your old SIM over to it and try to import your old messages, WhatsApp won’t find the backup you just made on Google Drive or anywhere else. That’s because WhatsApp checks the phone number in the backup to make sure it matches the one on the new phone, which it doesn’t.
It’s easily fixed actually, but not so easy to find in a Google search when you don’t know why it’s happening or what you’re looking for.
What to do – change your phone number on the old phone, and reimport to the new one
First you need to get the old phone number. Go to:
WhatsApp > Menu (three vertical dots on the top right hand corner) > Settings > Profile > Phone
Note down the phone number because you’ll need it to change the phone number on WhatsApp on your old phone to your current number.
Once you’ve changed the account phone number, backup the messages on your old phone again to make sure you get the most recent ones. Reinstall WhatsApp on your new phone, verify your number again, and tap RESTORE, and now WhatsApp should be able to see and install the backup file to your new phone
Happy days.