arearef

Q: Recovering old Voice Mail Messages.

My wife recently reset her iPhone 4 and lost all of her saved voice mail messages.  She was able to retrieve messages from the past month.  Though she really wants to recover some messages that were up to a year old.  These messages were from her mother who passed away in the end for December.  Does anyone have a suggestion on how these can be recovered?

 

Thanks

Posted on Jan 22, 2012 5:52 PM

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Q: Recovering old Voice Mail Messages.

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  • by vea1083,

    vea1083 vea1083 Jan 22, 2012 6:38 PM in response to arearef
    Level 3 (696 points)
    Jan 22, 2012 6:38 PM in response to arearef

    Usually, Voicemail messages are held in the phone company servers and these messages expire after a certain period of time (usually 14 days with AT&T). These "expired" messages are deleted automatically from the servers at the phone company and they cannot be recovered. The iPhone itself cannot save this messages on its internal memory.

     

    Hope this helps.

  • by arearef,

    arearef arearef Jan 23, 2012 6:21 AM in response to vea1083
    Level 1 (2 points)
    Jan 23, 2012 6:21 AM in response to vea1083

    I understand that they are purged off of the Carriers servers, do you know if they are "saved" anywhere on the PC with iTunes on it?  Thanks for your response!

     

    Mike

  • by vea1083,

    vea1083 vea1083 Jan 23, 2012 7:53 AM in response to arearef
    Level 3 (696 points)
    Jan 23, 2012 7:53 AM in response to arearef

    As far as my personal experience goes, the only things that get saved in iTunes are apps, contacts, music, videos, and settings. I have done iPhone restores in the past but I don't recall any of my old voice messages getting restored. The only messages that were "restored" per se, were the ones in the telephone company servers.

     

    However, during a quick google search I found an article talking about the iPhone voicemail app and how to recover deleted messages. I don't know if it will help but it might be worth a shot. The article link is below:

     

    http://i.tuaw.com/2011/09/16/iphone-101-recovering-deleted-voicemails/

     

    Good Luck!

  • by Mr Alexander,

    Mr Alexander Mr Alexander Jan 23, 2012 8:03 AM in response to vea1083
    Level 1 (45 points)
    Jan 23, 2012 8:03 AM in response to vea1083

    Voice mail is saved on the iPhone on the hard drive. Drive out to where there are no towers and listen to your voice mail. Apple has decided for ease of use to not allow you to manage the recordings, but they are there.

  • by vea1083,

    vea1083 vea1083 Jan 23, 2012 8:27 AM in response to vea1083
    Level 3 (696 points)
    Jan 23, 2012 8:27 AM in response to vea1083

    Reading further in the article I posted you can recover deleted messages in your iPhone. Just go into visual voicemail and in the message list just scroll down to the bottom of the list. You should see a button labeled as "deleted messages", tap the button and a list messages will show. Try to look for your wife's late mother messages.

     

    Hope this helps.

  • by seanymph,

    seanymph seanymph Aug 16, 2012 6:26 PM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 16, 2012 6:26 PM in response to arearef

    Me too and I have sentimental messages on there.  I started crying when I saw they all disappeared when I inserted another sim card :(

  • by seanymph,

    seanymph seanymph Aug 16, 2012 6:28 PM in response to vea1083
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 16, 2012 6:28 PM in response to vea1083

    Thank you, I will give it a go!  Because, I can't see why they would delete off the phone when you change a sim card.

  • by LiveWellNow,

    LiveWellNow LiveWellNow Sep 24, 2012 7:41 AM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 24, 2012 7:41 AM in response to arearef

    My iPhone 3G was lost or stolen yesterday.  I've been saving voicemail messages from my daughter for the past few years (From age 6 to 9).  Those messages are gone from the voicemail Cloud now, but have been retained on my phone.  Are they saved anywhere on my computer or in iTunes?  I've cherished those messages and it breaks my heart if they are gone. 

  • by seanymph,

    seanymph seanymph Oct 1, 2012 6:06 PM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 1, 2012 6:06 PM in response to arearef

    Hi there livewellnow, so sorry to hear that about your phone.  I know how you feel.  In the end I was unable to recover those sentiment

    Sentimental messages either, which were accidentally deleted.  I believe the only way you can save them is to go into your mobile phones server message bank weekly and save them that way.  Once they're saved each time from your servers end, then they are saved forever on your phone.  I can't believe that apples iCloud doesn't save them as it saves every bloody thing else. 

     

    Maybe if this is an issue of sentimentality us mere mortals have, Apple might get their act together so they can also be saved on our computers as audio in iTunes library!

     

    My empathy goes out to you.

  • by richieophth,

    richieophth richieophth Jul 24, 2013 8:49 PM in response to seanymph
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 24, 2013 8:49 PM in response to seanymph

    I experienced loss of important archived voicemails on my Iphone after restoring my Iphone 4s to Iphone 5 using ITunes backup files and again about 6 mos later after restoring another new Iphone 5 with a recent ITunes backup after water damage occurred to my first Iphone 5. Nobody in my local Apple store or on Apple phone support, including a "senior technician" had any useful knowledge to assist me with this issue.  Ultimately, I spent many hours researching this myself and found that Iphone voicemails are available for a limited period 30-90 days depending on the carrier but more importantly, voicemails ARE also indeed archived on an ITune backup. These voicemails are archived regardless of age assuming you didn't delete them off your IPhone before last backing up your device.

    So, if you lost or damaged your iphone but have an ITunes backup, all you need is an ITunes extractor, unfortunately not available through Apple. There are several ITunes extractors available for music, photos, SMS files but most do not read voicemails.  I successfully extracted from my ITune backup file all my voicemails, old and current using http://www.backuptrans.com/itunes-backup-extractor.html  (Windows and MAC versions available). A life-saver!

  • by sephish,

    sephish sephish Aug 29, 2013 6:32 AM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 29, 2013 6:32 AM in response to arearef

    Just to add another route...there are free backup extractors out there. Once you've extracted the ios files from the backup, navigate to that folder, find Library -> Voicemail.

     

    I just found over 100 sentimental messages that I thought were gone when I switched carriers...

     

    Thanks!

  • by Poolmyfinger,

    Poolmyfinger Poolmyfinger Oct 7, 2013 8:50 PM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 7, 2013 8:50 PM in response to arearef

    This happened to me going from my iPhone to the Galaxy s4 because apple and Android use different mailbox systems. Luckily, Verizon has gotten so many complaints that they set up a line that let's you access all your old voicemails. I used the voice recorder on my old iPhone to record my 38 messages while I was dialed in from my new phone....stuff from my kids as well as business calls. They are good for a month to retrieve.

     

    The number is 408-315-8134.  Input your phone number (mailbox number) and your password. Hope this helps someone.

  • by jayneaneville,

    jayneaneville jayneaneville Oct 16, 2013 5:10 AM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 16, 2013 5:10 AM in response to arearef

    Hi.  I have the same situation as your wife.  Were you able to retrieve the sentimental voice mails from her mother?  I am going to try the software mentioned above but an Apple senior advisor told me that a backup doesn't apply to voice mails!!!  I am just devasted!!!!!  This all happened with I switched from my 4s to the 5s.  I plan to call sprint to see if they can retrieve them from the server as well.  Please let me know.  Thanks!!!

  • by vlnvideo,

    vlnvideo vlnvideo Jan 20, 2014 6:15 PM in response to arearef
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2014 6:15 PM in response to arearef

    I had the same problem!  Thought the voicemails from my Father, who has also passed away, were gone.  Tonight I found iExployer and it worked wonderfully!  I opted to purchase the license product, though they have a free trial, because those voicemails were that important to me.  The software easily located my iPhone backup, in iTunes and in moments, there were all those previously saved voicemails.  I extracted them to my Desktop and even though they are .amr files, RealPlayer plays them perfectedly.  I just wanted to hear his voice.. and now those files are safe on our external server, never to be lost again. Check them out! http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/

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