"Your SMS mailbox is full"

I got the same exact message after I did the software update. If you figure out the answer let me know.

Seriously this is ********. I have a lot of old messages, but I kept getting this and have deleted THOUSANDS and entire conversations. The text message file is only 15MB. I know people that text a LOT more than me and I can't keep having my phone not receive texts, I've missed some VERY important ones. Can someone please help? The phone is almost uselsess if I have to delete texts every other day. I'm on iOS 5 too.

Ladies and Gentlemen I have the same issue. When I call Apple, they tell me its an AT&T issue. Then I called AT&T they tell me its an Apple issue. I still can't get a solution to this problem. I do know that AT&T is aware f the issue, but Apple keeps telling me they don't know what I'm talking about. I even restored to Factory setting without putting my stuff on there and it still is same issue with all texts deleted!

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1498

OK, after two weeks of absolute **** and also getting the same exact response from AT&T and Apple as Jamie did, not to mention 14+ hours of tech phone time between the two, I finally fixed this f'ing issue!!

- Running an iPhone 4 (16GB)

- Upgraded from previous verison to iOS 5

- Was unable to recieve SMS or MMS from then on out.

- Was able to send SMS, but would get the error message "Your SMS mailbox is full. New messages cannot be received until you delete some messages".

- The texts I sent would go through to their destination despite the error message, but none of the responses could come in.

- The only way I was able to rec'v any SMS (was never able to trick it into retrieving MMS) was by powering the phone down for 3 - 7 mintes, and upon restarting it would push through a small batch of stalled messages (only sometimes).

- Finally caved and purchased PhoneView for $19.95

- Plugged my phone in after installing PhoneView, and it calculated how many SMS messages were on the phone (78,089), so at least I knew where I was at. Thank God for PhoneView because Apple for some insane reason does not have anywhere that you can SEE the number to be able to know where you're at, since they decided to put a stupidly low limit on it in iOS 5 (15mb, roughly 75,000 SMS), I mean really? 15mb? When we have 16+ GB devices? If someone has a logical reason why they would have made that decision, please do enlighten me, because I'm mystified! Anyway...

- I then proceeded to start at the oldest conversations and move forward, deleting as many as I could. (Took nearly an hour!!) Once I did that, plugged the phone back in and launched PhoneView again. This time, even though I thought I had deleted the bulk of them, it only came out to 74, 814. But remember, Apple states that it is "roughly" 75,000 SMS limit, so although I was below that number, it still did not fix at that point.

- Then it dawned on me, I had about 18 months of a conversation stored between myself and co-worker. I couldn't afford to delete those texts because they had business conversations that I need to reference all the time, buuuut since I bought the nifty PhoneView, I was able to select that person/conversation and then "Copy from Phone" to desktop as a PDF file. It retained the bubble formatting, date/time stamps and all! The PDF was 117mb!

- Once I had that backup of the work conversations on my desktop, I went onto my phone, selected that conversation, clicked "edit" and then "clear all". This took about 2-3 minutes to delete.back in, went to iTunes

- Once it finished clearing the 18 months of conversation, I opened it up on PhoneView to see what kind of difference it made deleting that conversation thread, and the new number was 35, 278, well below the 75K limit. It cleared off 30K+ messages!!I

- Then I plugged the phone into iTunes, did a fresh backup, powered off the phone, restarted it, and BOOM!!! Everything came flooding in. SMS and MMS is back! Voicemails are back! All is good in the world.

It's really too bad the companies have acted so non-chalant about it and weren't of any help whatsoever.

And the Apple Support article is very ambiguous. Again, without a program like PhoneView, how is the user supposed to know how many to delete when Apple has provided no way to monitor?! Ridiculous.

Oh well, it's fixed now.

Wish all of you luck!

If you're reading this thread and having same problem, 100% this is what you need to do. Somewhere in there, you've got a long conversation, or a group of them, just like I did, and it's putting you way over the new lame limit (which did NOT exist on previous iOS' btw) - You need to find that/those convos, and delete them, backup again (in iTunes) and restart phone.

Note: Make sure to do a fresh iTunes backup BEFORE you even start deleting conversations. That way, if something weird happens when you try to save the files from PhoneView, you still have the data on your iTunes backup. But so far I have not encountered any issues with it copying the files onto my computer. It's a miracle this program!

Once you do all that, you're good to go 😀

- Sky

Thanks for the detailed step by step of what you went through.

However, this doesn't fix the problem because what happens in a few months/a year when you (we) have more critical conversations that we want to be able to reference all the time? Exporting them to PDF and then re-uploading them to the phone is ridiculous and shouldn't be necessary.

For those of us that did to iTunes backups before deleting many convos on out phone but didn't do phone view, can someone please help and explain the best way to get text messages from the backups? I know the file starts with "3d0d" or something and is obviously ~15mb but are there good and/or free programs that will reformat it into the "bubble" format and keep them organized by conversation etc? Thanks!

And remember, we all need to go to apple.com/feedback and tell them 15mb is pathetically low and causing us a lot of problems!

Hey Ken,

You're welcome. Was hoping I could help even just one person not have to spend (waste) hours of their life searching for a resolution on this ridiculous issue like I've had to.

It does fix the problem, of not being able to rec'v SMS/MMS, that is. But I feel you on the fact that this new iOS 5 limit is a MASSIVE problem regardless because eventually you will reach it again if you keep most SMS conversations.

The fact we can't do what WE want to do with our own HD space that WE paid for, is just ludicrous.

We can have 10/20/30/40/50 GB of music, videos, ringtones that we paid Apple for from iTunes no problem!!! But we can't have more then 15mb of SMS?? Silliest thing I've ever heard and one of the biggest #AppleFails ever. (unless someone here can explain the logic in regards to the technical aspect?)

Correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm certainly no Mathemetician but, 16GB = about 16,000MB. Dividing 15mb limit by 16,000mb = .0009375 which is barely a fraction of ONE PERCENT of our storage space.

Like seriously Apple? What a sick joke.

Anyhow, now that I have those conversations on searchable PDF, there is no need for me to put them BACK on my phone. I can have them in my iCloud or wherever I choose, as far as needing instant access.

And considering I was at 78K and after doing all this am now down to 35K, it would take another 1 year - 18 months for me to even get back in that situation again, and likely I will have a new phone by that time, not to mention you'd hope they will have fixed this ridiculousness by that point anyway.

Sigh...

Been an Apple user my ENTIRE life. My whole career is based on using Apple products. But stuff like this is really disappointing and can't just be swept under the rug.

I hope someone from Apple is paying attention to our plight and planning on doing something about it PRONTO.

And a final note to Apple if anyone is listening, a lot of this problem could have been easily solved by LETTING PEOPLE KNOW in the iOS update/fix list that this NEW limit would be imposed on anyone updating to iOS 5. Had I been warned, I would have known my phone was SMS heavy and would not have risked it. But I read through the whole list before I did the update and NOWHERE in it, did it mention this new limit. The result was me going nuts for 2 weeks, not able to communicate with people properly and wasting 18+ hours of my time on the phone trying to get answers from Apple/ATT to no avail. Not cool.

Good luck to everyone here!!!

-Sky

Reposting this with a few minor corrections and additional clarifications, as I guess you can't "edit" a post after a few minutes or delete posts at all on these forums? That seems pretty stupid but...

Here ya go...

Oct 25, 2011 2:34 AM (in response to Mikeymike88)

OK, after two weeks of absolute h*** and also getting the same exact response from AT&T and Apple as Jamie did, not to mention 14+ hours of tech phone time between the two, I finally fixed this f'ing issue!!

Here's the breakdown:

- Running an iPhone 4 (16GB)

- Upgraded from previous verison to iOS 5

- Was unable to receive SMS or MMS from then on out.

- WAS able to send SMS, but would get the error message "Your SMS mailbox is full. New messages cannot be received until you delete some messages".

- The texts I sent would go through to their destination despite the error message, but none of the responses could come in.

- The only way I was able to rec'v any SMS (was never able to trick it into retrieving MMS) was by powering the phone down for 3 - 7 mintes (yes, THAT long!), and upon restarting it would push through a small batch of stalled messages (only sometimes).

- After much internet research, and trying several "free" programs that ended up sucking, I finally caved and purchased PhoneView for $19.95

- Plugged my phone in after installing PhoneView, and it calculated how many SMS messages were on the phone (78,089), so at least I knew where I was at. (This takes a couple minutes to calculate, especially if you have a lot of SMS. So be patient. The number will appear at the bottom of the PhoneView screen, on the left, when you have only "Messages" highlighted in the sidebar menu. And yes, I do recommend selecting the "Archive" option when you first launch.)

Thank God for PhoneView because Apple for some insane reason does not have anywhere that you can SEE the number to be able to know where you're at, since they decided to put a stupidly low limit on it in iOS 5 (15mb, roughly 75,000 SMS). I mean really? 15mb? When we have 16+ GB devices? If someone has a logical reason why they would have made that decision, please do enlighten me, because I'm mystified! Anyway...

- Anyway, I then proceeded to start at the oldest conversations and move forward on my iPhone (unplugged from computer and with PhoneView quit), deleting as many as I could. (Took nearly an hour!!) Once I did that, plugged the phone back in and launched PhoneView again. This time, even though I thought I had deleted the bulk of them, it only came out to 74,814. But remember, Apple states that it is "roughly" 75,000 SMS limit, so although I was just below that number, it still did not fix at that point. (probably due to messages that have photos or video MMS in them, making the file larger than the standard text.)

- Then it dawned on me, I had about 18 months of a conversation stored between myself and a co-worker. I couldn't afford to delete those texts because they had business conversations that I need to reference all the time, buuuut since I bought the nifty PhoneView, I was able to plug in, launch the program, select that particular person/conversation and then "Copy from Phone" to desktop as a PDF file. It retained the bubble formatting, date/time stamps and all! The PDF was 117mb!

- Once I had that backup of the work conversations on my desktop, I quit PhoneView and unplugged from computer, then went onto my phone, selected that conversation, clicked "edit" and then "clear all". This took about 2-3 minutes to delete.

- Once it finished clearing the 18 months of conversation, I opened it up on PhoneView to see what kind of difference it made deleting that conversation thread, and the new number was 35,278 - well below the new 75K limit. It cleared off 30K+ messages!!I

- Then I quit PhoneView, fired up iTunes, did a fresh backup (with the newly deleted conversations gone), powered off the phone, restarted it, and BOOM!!! Everything came flooding in. SMS and MMS is back! Voicemails are back! All is good in the world. (or my world at least 😝)

It's really too bad the companies have acted so non-chalant about it and weren't of any help whatsoever.

And the Apple Support article, linked above in Bryan's post, is very ambiguous. Again, without a program like PhoneView, how is the user supposed to know how many to delete when Apple has provided no way to monitor?! Completely ridiculous.

Oh well, it's fixed now.

Wish all of you luck!

If you're reading this thread and having same problem, 100% this is what you need to do. Somewhere in there, you've got a long conversation, or a group of them, just like I did, and it's putting you way over the new lame limit (which did NOT exist on previous iOS' btw) - You need to find that/those convos, and delete them (first making a copy using PhoneView so you have it on your dekstop), backup again (in iTunes) and restart the phone.

Note: Make sure to do a fresh iTunes backup BEFORE you even start deleting conversations. That way, if something weird happens when you try to save the files from PhoneView, you still have the data on your iTunes backup. But so far I have not encountered any issues with it copying the files onto my computer. It's a miracle this program!

Once you do all that, you're good to go 😀

- Sky

Found the edit option... 😝

Guess you can't delete a post though?

:/

Message was edited by: iSky777

Hi Ken,

Were you able to eventually resovle this issue?

I posted a step by step fix (scroll above) but it seems no one has seen it 😟

Hope everyone got this fixed in the end!

-Sky