Disconnected WhatsApp, can't reconnect! my wife moved back to Android on a Galaxy S9+ from IOS and wanted her WhatsApp messages transferred. Its not straightforward, but followed an article that setout the process and managed it in the end but but had to do two key things that I'm struggling to reverse.


Disconnect WhatsApp from Google Drive. This is done in Google Drive 
settings/Manage Apps.
Install an older version of WhatsApp. Apparently the latest version
of WhatsApp will not automatically pickup a local backup.


Consequences now are:-


That WhatsApp on her phone will no longer auto update. Trying to
update manually in Playstore says its already installed.
WhatsApp will only backup locally and won't back to Google Drive
I can't reconnect WhatsApp to Google Drive - its isn't in the list in Google Drive / Settings / Manage Apps.


The article I followed just said that WhatsApp can be reconnected to Google Drive later, but didn't say how.

Anyone any suggestions on how to resolve this please?
I had the same issue and have now found the answer! The answer is that the version of Whatsapp which you used for restoring chats is not automatically reconnecting nor updating from the play store.

First of all, make sure you have made an internal backup of your chats, easy because backup to Google Drive no longer works.

Now uninstall Whatsapp - no worries, your content is backed up on the device.

Go to the Play Store and select Whatsapp. Install it.

Whatsapp will go through all the motions and find the local backup. It will ask to import it - allow that.

As a last step, the new Whatsapp will ask to connect to Google Drive for periodical backups - just answer what you prefere here.

Go have a look in Google Drive and see Whatsapp now appears once again in the list of connected apps.

All done!