Receiving submissions via Telegram: Our Memory Book

Contributors can submit memories through the Memorybook Telegram bot.

How it works

The contributor starts a conversation with the Memorybook bot on Telegram.
They send your book code to identify which book they're contributing to.
They follow the prompts to submit text and/or photos.

Enabling Telegram

Open your book's Channels page and flip the Telegram switch. Telegram is on by default for new books when your plan and our platform both support it; you can always pause it from the same page.

What contributors can send

Text messages
Photos (up to 20 MB each). They can be sent with or without a caption; if a photo is sent without a caption, the bot saves the photo as a submission on its own.
Multiple photos at once. Telegram media groups (albums) are automatically combined into a single submission.

Channel features

Session persistence: after the first message with a book code, follow-up messages go to the same book without repeating the code.
Contributor identity: the sender's Telegram name, username, and chat ID are captured and linked to their user account.
Media group batching: when a contributor sends multiple photos at once (an album), they are grouped into a single submission rather than creating separate entries, in the order they were sent.
Duplicate protection: webhook retries do not create duplicate submissions.
Rate limit: 20 submissions per hour per sender.

Bot commands

Contributors can use these commands in the Telegram chat:

/start BOOKCODE: Connect to a book. Also supports Telegram deep links. Sending /start with no code shows your Telegram Chat ID (useful for linking your account on the website).
/switch BOOKCODE: Switch to a different book without the current message being saved as a story.
/book: Show which book you're currently connected to.
/books: List every book you're a member of. Requires linking this chat to your account first (see below).
/signup: Create an Our Memory Book account from this chat. Bot replies with a one-time link to finish on the web.
/newbook TITLE: Create a new memory book and bind this chat to it. If you have a paid plan slot, the bot asks which plan to use; otherwise the book is created on the Free plan automatically.
/stories: View your 5 most recent submissions to the current book.
/help: List all available commands.

Using the bot in a Telegram group

You can add the bot to a family group so everyone can share memories in one place. Each person in the group is treated as themselves, not as whoever added the bot: their memories are credited to their own Telegram account, each person connects to a book with their own /start BOOKCODE sent in the group (a book you connected to in a direct chat with the bot is not used for your group messages, and the other way round), and the book's moderation settings apply to everyone except the book's owner and admins.

Replies from the bot appear in the group, so everyone in it can see them.
For privacy, commands that show your books, stories or account (/book, /books, /stories, /read, /newbook, /signup) only work in a direct chat with the bot. In a group the bot asks you to message it directly.
Link your account in a direct chat with the bot, never in a group. If you send /link in a group, the bot cancels that token because everyone there could see it; generate a new one and send it to the bot directly.

Linking your Telegram account

If you have an Our Memory Book account, you can link your Telegram identity so that memories you send via Telegram are matched to your profile.

Send /start (with no book code) to the bot. It will reply with your Chat ID.
Go to Account Settings on the website and paste your Chat ID into the Telegram section.
Save. Any submissions previously sent from that Telegram account will be automatically linked to your profile.

Resetting your password or using "Sign out everywhere" unlinks your Telegram chat (and an iMessage Apple ID linked the same way), in case someone else linked their chat while signed in as you. Memories you already sent stay on your profile. Link your chat again afterwards. If you send a memory before you do, we hold it for 24 hours and ask for your book code; send the code and it is added to that book. Re-link Telegram in settings to keep new memories on your profile.

Tips

Telegram users can block the bot at any time to stop receiving messages.
Share the bot link alongside your other submission options.
Email verification (verified contributor mode) is not available for Telegram submissions.

Photo dates

For memory-collection books (those dated by when the memory happened, the default for tributes, weddings, birthdays and the like), if a contributor sends a photo without a date attached (chat apps often strip it in transit), the bot may reply asking when it was taken. They just reply with a date like “June 2015” or “6/10/2025” and we'll place the memory in the right spot on the timeline, or they can reply skip if they’re not sure. Personal-journal books (dated by when it was shared) don’t ask; the photo is simply dated by when it arrives.

If a photo doesn’t arrive

On the rare occasion a sent photo can’t be saved (a transient download hiccup), the bot replies telling the contributor to send it again rather than a normal confirmation, so nothing is ever silently dropped.