Cant bulk delete attachments/photos in iMessages on any apple device?

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Level 1

8 points

Cant bulk delete attachments/photos in iMessages on any apple device?

This appears to have been going on for years - and I am surprised that I cant find a solution (or that Apple hasn't fixed this). Basically, I have gig's of old iMessages on several devices - iPhone, iPad, MB Pro - all with the most recent upgrades. I have a lot of attachments - typically all pictures that I have either sent or others have sent to me - that I want to delete in bulk.... yes, I can select them and then select <DELETE> but it only appears that about 10% of what I select actually get deleted - sure, I can do one at a time, but that is very time consuming. The phone has the ability to delete the large photos/attachments - but that does not help with the 100's or 1000's of other pictures......

I am just trying to clean up the old messages - while I would prefer to keep the texts and delete the photos - I am not even sure that deleting the entire tread helps

... and no, I am not using iCloud for these things

help!!!

please

-m

iPhone 12 Pro

Posted on Sep 10, 2022 11:16 AM

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Answer 1

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Sep 11, 2022 12:37 PM in response to mfirst

Hey, mfirst. We appreciate your clarification regarding deleting attachments on your device. Since they should all delete, we recommend reaching out to Apple Support to look into this issue further with you: Get Support

All the best.

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Answer 2

AdvisorMP

Community Specialist

Sep 11, 2022 11:47 AM in response to mfirst

Thanks for reaching out, mfirst.

It sounds like you want to remove the photos from your messages, but keep the actual messages. We can help.

While there is not currently an automated way to remove only the photos from your messages, you can either:

Remove all messages over a certain age by tapping Settings > General > iPhone Storage> Messages and enable Auto Delete Old Conversations: Delete messages on iPhone.
Remove the photos from messages manually by tapping the [Message Thread] > [Contact Name] > Scroll down to Photos > See All > Select. You can select multiple files if you wish, and then decide if you want to save those photos or delete them instead.

Hope that helps.

Take care.

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Answer 3

mfirst Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 11, 2022 11:53 AM in response to AdvisorMP

thank you for your reply...

yes - I know and it works for 1 picture at a time, but that is the point of my question (and I know others have tried to understand this also) - but you can select multiple pictures and then select delete - and it even confirms if you want to delete XXX attachments - but then only 1-2 pictures (regardless of how many you select) actually get deleted..... I have been trying to figure this out for years - the feature just does not appear to work

help?

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Answer 4

jeffd55

Community Specialist

Sep 12, 2022 8:03 AM in response to mfirst

mfirst,

Yes, this is one part of Apple Support. But we are limited in what we are able to do here. One limitation is the direct and immediate interaction. At this point our recommendation is to contact Apple Support to address the specifics of your issue.

Regards.

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Answer 5

mfirst Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 11, 2022 5:47 PM in response to SnickZ.

thank you - and appreciate your response - but I thought this was Apple support?

it sounds like this is a well-described problem over the years but no solution or understanding of why

-m

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Cant bulk delete attachments/photos in iMessages on any apple device?

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