DanielMPCB

Q: how to recover imessage history

Hello,

 

Can you help me recover my ichat or i message history from one use only?

 

 

Thxs + Rgds,

 

DanielM.

iPhone 4, iOS 7.0.1

Posted on Sep 27, 2013 7:34 AM

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Q: how to recover imessage history

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  • by Ralph Johns (UK),

    Ralph Johns (UK) Ralph Johns (UK) Mar 20, 2015 1:43 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 9 (73,336 points)
    Applications
    Mar 20, 2015 1:43 PM in response to Old Toad

    Hi,

     

    In Yosemite iMessages are stored in one place in chat.db items in ~/Library/Messages.  There are three of these chat.db items.

     

    The Saved Chats are in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Archive

    These may or may not included your iMessages depending on your Save settings.

     

    As you probably know the ~/Library/Containers.... route is used to Sandbox some of the Apps  and provides a Read/Write route to certain items (mostly .plists) that is different from the plain route to where they are stored.

    This dos not apply to the archive folder - it just seems it is tucked away in th Sandboxed area.

     

    This can mean you have to double check you Own all the folders from ~/Library down the the Messages one and the Archive itself.

    Also double check that you have Read and Write Permissions on each folder as well as the Transferred files.

     

    Repeat for the ~/Library/Messages and each Chat.db item.

     

    Moving the folder that they were stored in in Messages beta to the ~/Library/Messages seemed a good idea at the time as it also read the ~/Documents/iChats folder as well.

    Since then things have slowly become more and more hidden with no apparent reason.

    I can think of no reason to sandbox the Archive of Save Chats but not the iMessages databases.

     

    Of course there are Terminal ways of changing the ownership of these but I tend not to use Terminal myself.

     

    3Sigcopy2.png

    8:43 pm      Friday; March 20, 2015

     

      iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad
  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Mar 20, 2015 3:59 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 20, 2015 3:59 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)

    I've looked at all of those folders and files and have read and write access. However, I do not have an Archive folder in the Messages folder and didn't see one in the various Time Machine backups I looked thru. 

  • by Ralph Johns (UK),

    Ralph Johns (UK) Ralph Johns (UK) Mar 22, 2015 1:23 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 9 (73,336 points)
    Applications
    Mar 22, 2015 1:23 PM in response to Old Toad

    Hi,

     

    We should be looking in the longer path of ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages

    See Path Bar of this pic.

    Screen Shot 2015-03-22 at 20.22.04.png

     

    3Sigcopy2.png

    8:23 pm      Sunday; March 22, 2015

     

      iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad
  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Mar 22, 2015 2:11 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 22, 2015 2:11 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)

    Checked in the archive folder and all of the chats are there including the few I did in the last two days.  However, they are the only chats that show up in the Messages window. 

     

    All of the chat files are in the Archive folder but are not being displayed in the Messages window. Just the most recent.  Checked permissions on the Archive folder and contents and I have R & W access.

     

    Any idea on how to get them into Messages?  They're all there on the iPhone.

  • by Ralph Johns (UK),

    Ralph Johns (UK) Ralph Johns (UK) Mar 22, 2015 3:09 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 9 (73,336 points)
    Applications
    Mar 22, 2015 3:09 PM in response to Old Toad

    Hi,

     

    At this point I find I have loads in the Archive folder.

    I took to copying the iChat folder and moving that to the Archive as well.

     

    However in any Chat in the Messages window I can only seem to go back to when I installed Yosemite  and not access the Mavericks or earlier ones.

    However double  clicking my oldest ichat ones (2004) they will open in separate windows.

    Sometimes that does show the most recent iMessages or IMs in the Main window if they are more recent.

     

    People have complained about the amount of time it takes to scroll a long chat (or a contact that has had multiple chats over years) as it joins them together.

    It would seem Apple have made the decision it should be time limited without giving you any control over it.

    i.e previously a chat could show the "last chat"  (a whole Session) in an open window or the last 25 IMs or similar  or everything it could find from the same Buddy.

     

    There is obviously something about older saved chats that separates them for showing in Yosemite.

    I find it annoying myself for Buddies going back that long.

     

    Using the contextual menu and Open or Open with  does not change the separate window for older chats behaviour.

     

     

    3Sigcopy2.png

    10:09 pm      Sunday; March 22, 2015

     

      iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad
  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Mar 22, 2015 4:03 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 22, 2015 4:03 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)

    Thanks for the info.  At least I have all of the older chats on the iPhone so I can find what I want from there if necessary. 

  • by Ralph Johns (UK),

    Ralph Johns (UK) Ralph Johns (UK) Mar 23, 2015 1:02 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 9 (73,336 points)
    Applications
    Mar 23, 2015 1:02 PM in response to Old Toad

    Hi,

     

    If the Chat is on the iPhone and the Mac (iTunes) has a Backup there are apps and utilities about that are supposed to be able to extract them.

    It is not something I have done and I see two posts on this matter have been deleted from this Thread already.

     

     

    3Sigcopy2.png

    8:02 pm      Monday; March 23, 2015

     

      iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad
  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Mar 23, 2015 2:10 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)
    Level 10 (141,525 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 23, 2015 2:10 PM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)

    I have all of the individual chats in the archive folder as .ichat files and can view each by double clicking on them.  How can I get them back into the Messages app so they are there when Messages is opened?

  • by Ralph Johns (UK),

    Ralph Johns (UK) Ralph Johns (UK) Mar 23, 2015 2:22 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 9 (73,336 points)
    Applications
    Mar 23, 2015 2:22 PM in response to Old Toad

    Hi,

     

    That is the bit I am struggling with myself at the moment.

     

    I can only look back at anything that was "Saved" after I installed Yosemite and not before.

    Looking at Time Machine in the same Folder I can see there are Older Chats  but I cannot get back past the Yosemite Upgrade date.

    I had been unaware of this until today when I was checking something else.

     

    I am going to have to look in to this some more.

     

     

    3Sigcopy2.png

    9:22 pm      Monday; March 23, 2015

     

      iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad
  • by Ritaemmaaa,

    Ritaemmaaa Ritaemmaaa Mar 23, 2015 7:09 PM in response to kzzly
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 23, 2015 7:09 PM in response to kzzly

    kzzly wrote:

     

    I've been trying to recover my chat history for 2 weeks, this is how I could finally do it:

     

    http://www.justapple.com/2013/10/27/messages-chat-history-saving-mavericks-weve- got-fix/

    This actually worked, thanks so much for your help!!

  • by dolfke,

    dolfke dolfke Apr 6, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Ritaemmaaa
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Apr 6, 2015 12:27 PM in response to Ritaemmaaa

    I had to repair my Yosemite OS X, after that I lost all my Messages Chats, my buddies are all there, but without any chat history ..

     

    I checked my Archive, old and new chats are still there.

    Maybe someone has a solution to recover my message texts in the Messages app on my Mac.

  • by dmfrompgh,

    dmfrompgh dmfrompgh Jun 19, 2015 9:58 AM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 19, 2015 9:58 AM in response to Ralph Johns (UK)

    Your messages in this thread have been really helpful, so thank you.  I am trying to get my full iMessage history into Messages on my Macbook which is running Yosemite.  Here's my issue:

     

    -On 20/03 I started using this macbook, without transferring any old data from other laptops to it. 

    -At that point I could see all my iMessage history in Messages, even conversations from BEFORE 20/03.  Ideal!

    -On 10/05 I transferred the contents of my old MacBook (running snow leopoard, never had Messages on it) onto this new one.  From then on in Messages I could only see conversations from 10/05 onwards.

    -Using your instructions above I tried to bring the files from the old "deleted user" (aka my profile from 20/03 - 10/05) to my current user profile. 

    -I think I know where I went wrong.  When I dragged the three chat.db files from library/messages of the deleted user to the same folder of the current user, it recognised that they were the same file name of course, and when asked if I wanted to "change" or "replace," I chose replace.  Now naturally the only messages showing up are the ones from 20/03-10/05, plus any news ones coming in today.  I probably should have changed the old file names to ..._old and added them to the folder with the current .db files.  But I didn't. 

     

    Assuming that is indeed the problem, is there any way to get back the old chat.db files that I replaced?  Assume I'm a moron and didn't back-up before I started messing around. 

     

    I now also have the issue you mentioned with images not displaying in-line which was never a problem before, even looking at conversations that were several months old.  Now even when I click on them they do not open.  I send & receive a lot of pics so this is a big deal to me. 

     

    Also messed up now is the sequencing of messages in some conversations, so for example it will display messages from 11 April then 3 March then 19 March. 

     

    Here's the current state of my files:

     

    -In my ~/library/messages/archive folder I can see a subfolder for every day, 20/03 to now. 

    -In my ~/library/messages/attachments folder I have everything that has been in there since 20/05 plus a new subfolder, also called attachments, that came from the same file path of the deleted user (me from 20/03-10/05).   

    -All of those archive and attachment folders and subfolders are ALSO under ~/library/containers/com.apple.ichat/data/library/messages/

     

    Should they live in both places like that?  How should I proceed? 

     

    Ultimately, all I want is to be able to see within Messages all the conversation history that I can see on my iPhone.  I back-up my iPhone onto my computer. Surely there must be some way to "push" the message history from my phone (or back-up or iCloud) into the Messages application?  It must have happened once because when I started using the computer on 20/03 I could see message history going back months prior!  I just want to get back to that. Thank you so very much!!

     

    DM

  • by Ralph Johns (UK),

    Ralph Johns (UK) Ralph Johns (UK) Jun 19, 2015 12:42 PM in response to dmfrompgh
    Level 9 (73,336 points)
    Applications
    Jun 19, 2015 12:42 PM in response to dmfrompgh

    Hi,

     

    As I was explaining to Old Toad I have been having issues around this specific area myself.

     

    In my case I know why - I did a particular Update to the OS  and therefore Messages in July 2014.

    I did not spot the issue until much later when trying to find the "history" of the chats with one of my regular Buddies (it was an AIM conversation).

     

    What this seems to have create is some files in ~/Library/Messages that are "older" chat.db items that are marked as incompatible.

    In looking at them only yesterday I can see that they also have info about the Saved chats.

     

    I presume that this is why and manually selecting an Old chat can open to view it but it will not become part of the "history" of chats with current people.

    I can view the current chats I tend to keep open in Messages back to the update date in July 2014.

     

    I have seen one fix on line  that refers to the use of Terminal  at a specific point in time based on the Incompatible File version and the Darwin (The very base of the OS) that was in use at the time.

    As I was unaware of this at the time I have not attempted it as my Darwin version has since been updated to the one in use in Yosemite.

     

    I also have iChat Saved files  going back to 2004.

    The Messages beta would also read these in there original position in ~/Documents/iChats.

    Full Messages apps since have not done this.

    I have tried moving all of these to the Archive Folder (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages) but to no avail.

    Even the Updates since have not rescanned this folder and added all the extra files or even the older ones that used to appear.

     

    I did read a thread yesterday where someone else had the Archive folder also in ~/Library/Messages when new ones were being saved to the ~/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages one  (It what made me look at this again).

     

    I think merging the current chat.db set of files with the incompatible ones may provide me with some progress but I don't have the tools to do this.

    I also can't find the site I was looking at before.

     

    There does not seem to be a way of re-indexing the Archive folder that I can find.

     

     

     

     

    3Sigcopy2.png

    8:42 p.m.      Friday; June 19, 2015

     

      iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
     Couple of iPhones and an iPad
  • by DesmondShort,

    DesmondShort DesmondShort Jun 25, 2015 7:54 PM in response to DanielMPCB
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 25, 2015 7:54 PM in response to DanielMPCB

    Your iMessages may be stored in iCloud backups, so you can try to recover deleted iPhone iMessages history via iCloud backup recovery:

    Tap on settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage > Device Name > Check the backup's created date.

     

    Before recovery, you should know that once you choose to restore your device with iCloud backup, all your data in your device will be replaced by the contents in the backup.

     

    Good luck.

    DS.

  • by AnoushG,

    AnoushG AnoushG Jul 28, 2015 2:14 AM in response to hyq
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 28, 2015 2:14 AM in response to hyq

    Juste wanted to add something to this,

    in case you have started in the middle of the process your imessage,

    you have to remove the "new" files created into ~/Library/Preferences with ichat and imessage extensions.

    voilà!

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