Instagram Stories let you share your day to day experiences with all your followers around the world. You can add as many stories as you like as long as you don’t mind spamming your friends. These stories stay on your profile and visible for 24 hours. After that, they disappear and can no longer be seen. But where do they go and how can you get these old stories back? Read on to find out.
What is Instagram Archive?
While Instagram stories are a great way to share the moment with your friends and followers, that only lasts 24 hours. Post that the story is gone and neither you nor your followers can relive it. That is why Instagram users had been asking for a function to let them save their stories so that they could view them at a later time too.
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Instagram introduced the Archive feature in 2017 in response to this growing demand. The function lets you save your Stories beyond 24 hours. But that catch is that only you can view these saved stories. Archived stories are only visible to the account holder. For your followers, the stories will still disappear after 24 hours.
By default, the archive function is turned on so you do not need to worry about it. Each time you post a story it is automatically saved to your archive. The Story archive populates in chronological order according to the date and time that the story was posted.
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How to view old Instagram Stories?
You may not know, but all your old Instagram stories live right on your profile. They are just hidden from view. Follow the guide below to locate your previously posted Instagram stories.
Launch the Instagram app and go to your profile by tapping the ‘Profile’ button in the bottom right corner.
Now tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner and go to ‘Archive’.
Here you can view all your previously posted Instagram stories in chronological order. The newest stories will appear last. Scroll up to view older stories.
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How to save your old Instagram stories
Now that you have found them, you may want to save your old Instagram stories to your device. These stories currently live on the Instagram cloud and are only accessible through the app. You can save your stories to your local storage so that you can easily access them.
To save your stories, use the guide above to locate your old Instagram stories in the Archive. Now tap on a story to select it.
Now tap the ‘More’ button in the bottom right corner of the story (three dots), and select ‘Save video’ or ‘Save photo’ depending on the story.
Once saved, you can access your old story from your device’s native gallery.
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How to repost an old Instagram Story
If you would like to relive the old memory, you can even repost it. Instagram lets you repost your old stories either as a new story or as a post on your profile grid.
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As an Instagram Story
To repost your old story to your Instagram stories, use the guide above to locate the story in your Archive.
Now tap the story to select it, then tap the ‘Share’ button in the bottom panel.
You can decorate the story with stickers and emojis as you like before sending it out. Once done, hit the ‘Your Story’ button in the bottom left corner to add it to your story. The story will remain on your profile for 24 hours just like a regular story.
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As a post
To repost your old story to your profile grip as a regular post, use the guide above to locate the story in your Archive.
Now tap the story to select it. Tap the ‘More’ button in the bottom right corner of the story (three dots), and select ‘Share as Post…’
This will bring you to the post editor. Go ahead and edit the post as you normally would, then post it to your account.
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How to create a highlight from old Instagram stories
You can actually make your old Instagram stories live forever on your profile by adding them to your Highlights. Highlights are not just visible to you but everyone in your Followers list (or everyone on Instagram, depending on your privacy settings).
To add an old story to your Instagram Highlights, use the guide above to locate the story in your Archive.
Now tap the story to select it, then tap the ‘Highlight’ button in the bottom panel. You can choose to create a new highlight, or add it to a previously created one.
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How to turn on Archiving
When Instagram introduced the Archive option, it left it on by default. This automatically saves all your Instagram Stories to an archive for you to access later. However, if you turned this setting off by mistake and want to turn it back on, here is how you can go about doing it.
To turn on the Archive function, launch the Instagram app, and go to your profile by tapping the ‘Profile’ button in the bottom right corner.
Now tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner and go to ‘Archive’.
Tap the three dots in the top right corner and select ‘Settings’.
Toggle the setting for ‘Save to Archive’ on.
We hope this article helped. If you have any queries, feel free to reach out to us in the comments below.
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