Convert Instagram messages to PDF

How to convert Instagram DMs to PDF

1. Request and download your messages from Meta first — see How to download Instagram messages for the exact steps through Accounts Center.
2. Unzip the download and find message_1.json inside your_instagram_activity/messages/inbox/<conversation name>/. Long conversations may also have message_2.json, message_3.json and so on.
3. Open chattoevidence.com and drop message_1.json onto the page. If the conversation is split across several numbered files, drop the whole download .zip instead (or zip that conversation’s folder) — the tool finds every message_N.json inside, merges them and re-sorts by timestamp.
4. Check the preview for correct participant names and that special characters look right (see the mojibake note below). Rename participants if a username should read as a real name.
5. Click Generate PDF. The free preview covers the first 100 messages with a watermark; the $9 Case Pass unlocks the full conversation, removes the watermark and adds the certification page.

Fixing garbled accents and emoji (mojibake)

Meta’s JSON export has a well-known bug: it encodes text as UTF-8 but writes it into the JSON file as if it were Latin-1, so any accented character, non-English word or emoji comes out as garbage — a message that should read “café ☕” shows up as “café â’—. This isn’t a problem with your conversation; it’s how Meta’s export tool escapes text, and it affects everyone’s Instagram and Facebook downloads, not just yours.

Chat to Evidence detects this pattern and reverses it automatically before rendering the PDF, so names, emoji and non-English text come out the way they were actually typed. You don’t need to do anything for this to happen — it runs as part of parsing the file.

What the PDF looks like

The output starts with a cover page listing the conversation title, participants, date range and message count. The transcript that follows shows one message per row with the timestamp, sender name and text, with day separators so a reader can track how the conversation unfolded over time. Every page has a footer with “Page X of Y” so nothing goes missing if it’s printed or copied.

With the Case Pass, a certification page records the SHA-256 hash of the exact message_1.json (and any additional numbered files) used to generate the PDF, along with an optional exhibit label and Bates numbers for referencing specific pages.

Multi-part conversations and merged files

Instagram splits long DM threads across multiple JSON files, numbered message_1.json, message_2.json and onward, each covering a slice of the conversation in reverse-chronological chunks. If you only upload message_1.json, you’ll get the most recent portion, not the whole thing. Drop the entire download .zip (or a zip of that conversation’s folder) and the tool merges every numbered file into one continuous, correctly ordered transcript.

Photos and shared content

Meta’s export includes photos sent in the conversation as separate image files referenced from the JSON. Where a referenced photo is included in your upload, the free preview shows a placeholder noting an attachment was sent; the Case Pass can embed supported image types inline, similar to how WhatsApp chat to PDF with images works. Reels, posts and links shared in a DM appear as the text link or caption Instagram recorded, since the underlying media for those isn’t included in a standard data export.

Why do this instead of screenshotting the app?

Screenshotting an Instagram DM thread is slow, loses exact timestamps behind relative labels like “2h”, and produces images that can’t be searched or reliably paginated. A JSON-based PDF keeps every original timestamp, orders messages correctly even across days, and produces a document that prints and pages the same way every time — which is what an HR reviewer, a court clerk or a visa officer generally expects to see.