Do you manage both a business and a personal Instagram account? And are differences between the two interfaces driving you crazy? I want to share one critical difference that made me bonkers for a long time: where to find the Instagram Stories Archive for your personal account’s expired Stories. Your personal Stories aren’t lost, they’re hiding!
Stories Archive for business accounts
The Instagram Stories Archive in a business account is a snap to find, because it’s in a logical place: the Archive, symbolized by this little clock, found on the top left of your account’s profile page.
When you click the Archive icon, you get all the Stories you’ve ever posted on the account, organized by date. From here you can choose any Story and add it to a Highlight. Easy, right?
Stories Archive for personal accounts
For personal accounts, the Stories Archive is not so easy to find. I couldn’t find mine for a year! There’s a little clock symbol, but when I clicked it, the Archive was empty.
I checked my settings to make sure Stories were set to save to Archive, and it said they were.
Even Instagram Support was no help – they just tell you to look in the Archive.
So where are they?
I finally solved the mystery today, and found my “missing” Stories. They were in such an unintuitive place, I figured I can’t be the only one who needed to know.
Here’s where to find your Stories!
- Go to your personal account’s profile page.
- In Highlights, click New.
BAM! There they are!
I hope I’m not the only one who had trouble with this. I felt super-dumb when I figured it out. And for a year – A YEAR! – I only made Highlights for Stories on my personal account within the first 24 hours. After that, I couldn’t find them!
The moral to this story is, don’t feel bad if you don’t know how to do something on social media. These interfaces are not perfect, and they change all the time. Even frequent users like me get frustrated. Ask questions, and keep trying things. You might stumble on some knowledge you can share with others.
Now if you’ve now just found your past Stories for the first time, enjoy – it’s like finding a lost photo album! ?
Were you on a similar treasure hunt for your Stories? Tell me in the comments.
Want more social media tips and inspiration? Read our other blog posts.
Need help with social media for your optical business? Contact us.
Peggy is the founder of The Social Eye, a social media agency for optical businesses. She led social media efforts at ZEISS Vision US for 4 years, and prior to that created digital marketing for the tech and music industries. She has far too many pairs of eyeglasses, but can always find room for one more.
I don’t see the clock symbol on my ig
Also clicked archive by mistake few mins ago and I want to get my picture back and post it!
What can I do ?
Hi Jonathan. The IG interface has changed since I wrote this, as it often does. Also, it now presents differently to different kinds of accounts (personal, business, creator, and there are probably more). For me, the clock symbol moved into the menu available when you click the symbol with 3 lines on the top right of your profile page.
Clicking Archive doesn’t do anything to a post — it just opens an archive of your Instagram Stories. Hope that helps.
Same problem here, I can’t find a picture I accidentally archived… It’s not in Archive, and I have no Highlights…
Hi Etienne. The Archive only stores your expired Instagram Stories. So if you didn’t put that picture in an Instagram Story, it won’t be there. You don’t have to do anything to have Stories archived — it’s automatic, leaving you an option to put Stories in Highlights after they expire after 24 hours. If it’s a Post you’re looking for, those aren’t archived — and if it’s missing, you probably inadvertently deleted it.
Many many thanks for your cooperation.
On the profile page I don’t have the +New Highlight button, only a +Highlight button. I checked my sons account and he has the +New button. Same phone! Any suggestions?
Make sure you are logged into the Instagram account you’re trying to add a Highlight to. If you’re not, you won’t be able to edit that page or add Highlights. If you’re logged in correctly and still don’t see the +New for Highlights, consult Instagram Support: https://help.instagram.com/.
All of my story archives just disappeared. It thinks I have none and has an icon that says I need to post stories to have an archive but I have posted stories and had posted stories. I don’t really know what to do and I’m freaking cause I need those stories.
That sucks! But they may not be gone. If you’re looking at them when you have a shaky Internet connection, they may just not be appearing for you temporarily. So look another time when your connection is good, like at home on you personal wifi. If that’s not the case and they really disappeared, contact Instagram! https://help.instagram.com/
So mine are random. Even in your highlight. They are just randomly in there. Segments of videos are missing and even out of order. It is very confusing.
Oh and like half of my stories down have the add to highlight icon at the bottom of them when they actually live.
Do you have any ideas?
Not sure if you mean the order of your Stories or the order of your Highlights, but I’ll try to answer about both. Stories order: continuous video that’s stretched out over several Stories can sometimes upload out of order. Not much you can do about that, except next time be sure you have a great Internet connection so it doesn’t choke one one Story and post it later. Otherwise, Stories go up in the order you posted them. Highlights order: They appear under your bio in the order of last added to appears first. So if you have a favorite you want to be first all the time, you have to add to it all the time. Or use my trick: remove a Story from it, add it back, and then it’s back to the front again.
The “add to Highlight” (heart) button is always there, because you can add a Story to multiple highlights.
Hope that helps!
When I click on the ‘New’ icon, it says it’s empty ?
Have you made any Instagram Stories? Because a Highlight is just a collection of Stories, and if you have none…?
i think ig has a bug because it *for sure* doesn’t save all the stories in the archive. i did a Q&A about a week back consisting of like 30 stories, but only 6 or so of them are in the archive. and i for sure didn’t manually delete. this is what i’ve heard from other ppl too. sad.
Oh no! That’s terrible. Definitely an argument for doing your settings so it saves each Story to your phone, just in case.
Added a story and it doesnt appear in Archive.Its setted to Archive storiesI have only 2 stories and one is missing.There is nothing about me or phone but Instagram ….
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
Idk y this is happening with me… I have all my archived stories but there are a few stories which i am not able to seee for example… M not able to see my archived story of 30th nov 2019 i remember i had posted story on that day and few days before also i checked it was there…. N today.. Wohh!! M not able to see that can u plz help me with this
I’m so sorry! There are many reasons that it might not be there, and I don’t how to help you find it. Please reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help). Also, set your Stories to save to your phone as well as your Archive. To do this, go into your Stories, hit the wheel on the top left, and under Saving turn on Save to Camera Roll.
It’s Because You Are Checking The Archive Posts LoL, click the arrow next to archive , and you should be able to find “Story” or “Post”, just go back to “Story” and you can find the story lol….
Yeah, note that this blog post was written a year and a half ago. A lot has changed!
yeah.. real lol Samuel.. it still doesn’t work
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
I was looking at my archived stories on insta and I remember my first story was in 2017 and when I wanted to see it again it says that my first story was on June 2018.. I tried to refresh and everything and it still didn’t work.. does this mean my whole 2017 stories got deleted?:(
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
Hmm I followed directions here but when I hit “new highlight” it’s totally empty. And I checked, by default my settings already told it to archive all stories. Weird. Also, these are stories someone else originally made that mentioned me, and I added them to my story. Dunno if that changes anything. Thanks
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
I actually STILL can’t find my stories! I have a biz account and they were once there buuut meow they’re not. all the settings are set as they should be too. it’s driving me nuts!
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
i tried that for my personal account but still no stories showed up. I deleted the app and re-installed it and still nothing. Any other tips, i need those *crying
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
Instagram only shows me my archived stories from october 2019, the ones from 2017-2018 are missing, this is new because I’ve seen them befare, and I really need them, what should I do? ?
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
I have my archive story but some of them were lost … what can i do to get them back ?
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
Hi Peggy, was wondering if you could help–the highlight button in my story is gone (when I clicked my story yesterday, there was the highlight option, so i could add a story to my highlights) but today it’s gone! any chance you know how to fix that?
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).
Hello my stories archives was turned off…
Can someone please say how to get back please help!
You should reach out to Instagram support (in the app, go to your profile page, then Settings > Help).