Restore WhatsApp Chats from SmartSwitch backup

[laptop1990]

Hello,

I did a factory reset on my S8 having backed up all my applications to an SD card with SmartSwitch.
The issue is that my current phone number is different than the one I used to set up WhatsApp originally, so I cannot restore my chats by logging in with the same number, or restoring it from the Google Drive backup (which requires a matching number, I believe).

My only hope is that I might be able to do this manually with the data in the SmartSwitch backup. There is a file in the encrypted backup data called com.whatsapp.enc. It seems big enough, at 38.03 MB, to be what I want. Is there any way to transfer this encrypted file manually to WhatsApp with a different number?

Many thanks.

 

[SpookDroid]

Whatsapp chats are never backed up without encryption, and this, unfortunately, IS tied up to the account (i.e. phone number) the back up belongs to. The only way to transfer these is to follow Whatsapp's 'transfer phone number' procedure, which does require you to have access to both the old and new phone number to perform the transfer.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/498754122134583/?cms_platform=android

 

[laptop1990]

Thanks, SpookDroid. I suspected that that might be the case. Rather annoying, but nice to have confirmation. Cheers.