Save text messages as a PDF: ordered, dated and complete

This guide explains how to make a clear, complete record of a conversation. It is not legal advice: what a court, a tribunal or an employer accepts as evidence depends on where you are and on your case.

Make the PDF now

Step 1: capture full screens, never crops

A cropped bubble of text proves very little. A full screen shows the context:

• The header: the contact’s name or number, so it is clear whose conversation this is.
• The date separators (“Friday 3 October”) and the time next to each message.
• The status bar: the phone’s own clock and date at the top.

So take the screenshot of the whole screen, every time, and do not edit, crop or annotate it. If you want to mark something, do it later on a copy of the PDF, never on the screenshots themselves. Keep the original screenshot files on the phone or in a folder; they carry their own file dates.

Step 2: overlap every capture by 1 message

Scroll so the last message on one screenshot is the first message on the next. The repeated message is the join, and it shows that nothing was skipped in between. Without the overlap, anyone can ask what was in the gap.

Step 3: put the screenshots in time order

Phones name screenshots by the moment they were taken, for example Screenshot_20261003-091452.png, so the names already sort in the order you took them. Copy them to 1 folder on the computer, then on PNG to PDF click or a whole folder (or drag the folder onto the page). A dropped folder is sorted by name, the way people count. Check the list: the top file must be the oldest part of the conversation. Move a stray one with Up and Down.

On a computer you can also copy a screenshot and press Ctrl+V on the tool page; pasted pictures join the list at the bottom.

Step 4: convert with room for the numbers

Set the options before you press Make the PDF:

1. Paper: A4 (or US Letter). Every page prints on a normal sheet. “Same as the picture” makes a page the size the screenshot claims: our 1080 by 2340 pixel test screenshot became a page of 381 by 826 mm, which no printer takes.
2. Orientation: Auto. Phone screenshots are tall, so the pages are portrait.
3. Margin: 15 mm. A tall screenshot on A4 fills the full height of the page, so without a margin the page number would sit on top of the last message.
4. Fit: Fit, so nothing is cut off. Never Fill, which crops the edges, and never Stretch.
5. Output: “One PDF, a page per picture”.

The text stays as sharp as on the phone. A screenshot is a PNG, and PNG to PDF stores it losslessly, so each pixel in the PDF is the pixel in the screenshot. We measured 17 chat screenshots, 2.8 MB together: the PDF came out at 2.7 MB, the result card saying “17 pictures stored losslessly”.

Step 5: number the pages

Download the PDF, drop it on Add page numbers and choose:

• Format: “Page 1 of 12”. A page that is printed, faxed or forwarded alone still says where it belongs and how many there are.
• Where: Bottom centre, the default.
• Footer, if you like: a short description such as “Messages with the landlord, 3 to 10 October 2026”. The footer sits above the numbers.

Press Add numbers. The numbers go in as real text, and the file is named after the original with -numbered on the end. Our 17-page test file grew by less than 1 KB.

What this PDF is, and what it is not

It is a readable, complete, ordered copy of what the screen showed, that someone can print and read from page 1 to the end. That is what an HR department, a landlord or a mediator usually needs to follow a dispute.

It is not forensic proof. A screenshot can be edited, and a PDF of screenshots cannot show that it was not. In the United States, for example, Federal Rule of Evidence 901 asks for “evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is”, and lists ways to do that, among them testimony of a witness with knowledge and evidence about a process or system (Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 901, Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, checked on 11 October 2026). That is why a court may also want the phone itself, the platform’s own export or the provider’s records. Other countries have their own rules. Again: this explains, it is not legal advice.

What you can do is keep everything that supports the PDF: the original screenshots, unedited, and the phone with the conversation still on it.

The other record: the app’s own export

For WhatsApp, the app has Export chat in the chat’s menu, with a choice of “Without media” or “Include media”; with media, only the most recent media is attached (WhatsApp Help Center, “How to export your chat history”, checked on 11 October 2026). The messages arrive as a text file with a date and time on every line. That export is searchable and covers long histories in a way 40 screenshots cannot; the screenshots show the conversation as it looked, with names and pictures. Many people keep both.

For an email thread, print it to PDF from the mail program instead of screenshotting it: email to PDF shows how, and the result keeps the headers with sender, recipient and date.

The honest part

• getPDF does not prove anything. It converts and numbers. It does not sign, timestamp or certify the PDF, and a PDF made here carries no more weight than one made anywhere else.
• It does not read the messages. The screenshots are pictures; the text in them is not searchable until you run OCR, which is approximate.
• Missing messages stay missing. If a message was deleted before you captured it, no tool brings it back.

What getPDF does add: the conversation never leaves your device while you make the file, which matters for messages that are private by nature. PDF privacy and protection covers the rest, such as a password on the file before you email it.