How to save texts from an old iPhone

May 30, 2017 2:03 PM

My wife is finally turning in her ancient iPhone 5C, and wants to be able to pull old text threads off of it to save permanently. How?

My wife's surprisingly rugged iPhone 5C is finally giving up the ghost, and she's going to need to get a new phone soon. However, her current phone has several text threads on it from now-deceased loved ones that she'd really, really like to save permanently. We've tried reading methods to accomplish this from various online sources but we're both complete chumps when it comes to technology and can't really parse what's even being suggested. Is there a way to do this that's easy enough for two old fools to handle? And can you explain it to us as simply as possible?

If it's relevant, the only computer in the house is a PC, and she's currently running version 9.3.2 of ios.

posted by saladin to Technology (10 answers total)

Doesn't backing-up the phone to iCloud include text threads?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:30 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is she getting another iPhone or switching to another OS?
posted by soelo at 2:35 PM on May 30, 2017

Response by poster: Probably getting another iPhone, but paranoid about the impermanence of the cloud and hoping to find a back-up solution.
posted by saladin at 2:43 PM on May 30, 2017

...but paranoid about the impermanence of the cloud and hoping to find a back-up solution.

Does she have iTunes on her PC? She can back-up to it directly. If so, she can make a backup then connect the new phone and select "Restore from backup." Her texts should be restored.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:59 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

I just backup to my laptop. Haven't lost a text convo yet!
posted by jbenben at 3:43 PM on May 30, 2017

I bought iMazing because iTunes doesn't keep everything. IMazing will keep it all and you can store it on a PC and transfer it to a new phone.
posted by littlewater at 4:50 PM on May 30, 2017

Best answer: Restoring from iTunes usually works, but it's DEFINITELY worth having a way to manually back up text threads you care about. I use a desktop app called iExplorer that makes it very easy to export sms threads (including images), voicemails, etc. I use the Mac version, but it's also available for Windows.
posted by kalapierson at 9:28 PM on May 30, 2017

And for precious threads like the ones you describe, don't forget you can also make another kind of backup anytime by taking screenshots (to take a screenshot, hold down the Home [round] button and the power button at the same time). This is labor-intensive for long threads, but I'm mentioning it as a free and easiest possibility.
posted by kalapierson at 9:32 PM on May 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I asked a very similar question recently and got good advice. I ended up using PhoneView.
posted by meijusa at 9:42 PM on May 30, 2017

I've also used iExplorer and I'm glad I did because my iMessage database has gotten corrupted a couple of times, requiring me to delete it entirely in order to make iMessage work again. You can save the messages as a text file, csv, etc.
posted by mskyle at 2:37 AM on May 31, 2017