How to back up entire sms threads (BlackBerry / Mac)?

June 16, 2008 1:13 PM

How can I preserve / back up long sms conversations with one other person -- simply as long chunks of plain text containing entire conversations?

The other person has an old cell phone that doesn't do anything special (although soon he might have an iPhone), and I have a BlackBerry, which is only able to preserve *single* sms messages, one at a time (its "forward as" function will let you send one sms, as an email or in other forms). That would be crazy-laborious for backing up long threads of sms messages.

So far I've just been typing out the messages and dates/times (while looking at my BB's screen) into a plain text file on my computer. Also kind of laborious.

The only way for a BB to back up an entire sms thread appears to be using the PC-only BlackBerry Desktop software (I have a Mac). So I guess I'm looking for a third-party sms backup solution.


One solution I can imagine is that my sms texts would come both to my bb and to another account somewhere, and from the other account I could generate long plain-text files listing all the messages ever -- or it would auto-generate one text file for every 50 or 100 sms messages or whatever.

posted by allterrainbrain to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Is your correspondent using a phone supported by BitPim?
posted by fengshui at 3:35 PM on June 16

Thanks, good thought. But no.
posted by allterrainbrain at 9:27 PM on June 16

I've done the same thing (copying conversations into a text file). It's a bore.

My understanding is that if your phone is bluetooth enabled there is software that will allow you to download stuff from your phone (inbox/outbox messages, address book) wirelessly. This software should be available on all platforms and work with all bluetooth enabled phones.

I've done a bit of a search and found some software for GNU/Linux (my platform) but haven't gone any further than that.
posted by Sitegeist at 1:13 AM on June 17

.treasuremytext.com

might do it?
posted by munchbunch at 5:38 AM on June 17

Nope, treasuremytext looks like a good idea for some but for me in the U.S. it would be 30 cents per message and still involve individually sending them...
posted by allterrainbrain at 12:04 PM on June 18