Recovery of text messages

My iphone states that my text messages are included in icloud back up. Accessing icloud from my PC, under "Apps using iCloud", messages are listed, but when I hit the "learn more", it is providing link to set up/get started - so what is it? I simply can not see any messages on my phone older than 6 months. I thought I would be able to go to icloud back up to retrieve what I really need. Do I misunderstand? How can I find these old items if not in the back up!? Another worry, if you have your phone syncing with icloud, and you have deleted photos from phone cause you assumed in icloud back up, would the sync either pull the photos back to phone or maybe even the phone sync only the remaining photos back to icloud, thereby loosing the previous back up??? WHY IS THIS SO UNCLEAR. IS IT ME OR IS IT WORD PLAY BEING USED TO JUST CONFUSE US TO FALSELY TRUST THE PROCESS? I NEED TO GET AN OLD TEXT BACK