Need to print old text messages for a court case. How can I do this?
iPhone 4
I think there maybe an app that you can use to do that.
but you can also take a snap shot of your text then email it to yourself and then print it out.
If you have a PC, the cheapest solution (3.99) is http://www.iphonetextmessages.com/
If you have a Mac, there's a program on the Mac App Store (SMS Export)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/smsexport/id406868733?mt=12
It's also important to download the update as you can read in the description.
Just look at 1st May 2013 Christopher
Simple and works if you just want a text print
You can download Print Pro and just print from ur iPhone. Printer should be wifi support.
It seems http://www.iphonetextmessages.com/ it's now available also for Mac, and it works well! 🙂
It' still the cheapest around, just $3.99...
Do we really need to use these apps? Can't we just take a screenshot by pressing the Home and the sleep/wake button simultaneously and forward this to our email address or Airprint it to a airtprint capable printer? There are many useful methods for transferring and printing text messages on a computer mentioned in this Oreilly discussion: http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/4184-how-to-print-out-iphone-sms-text-messages- on-my-pc/
The issue, for me, is how to capture time and date when taking a photo of my screen. The time stamps are really crucial to my case. You have to swipe left to get that info, though, on IOS7, and I can't swipe left and snap a photo at the sake time. How frustrating.
My best suggestion for how to print text messages from iPhone is take a screenshot and send the picture to a pc for printing.
I've used PhoneView for a couple years now and I think that it, or an app like it, may be one of your better solutions if your texts show up in Messages on the Mac. With PhoneView you can:
Within seconds of the phone sync completing, you would have a record of the texts you want in the form you want.
Yes, PhoneView costs a little money, but if this is a legal case that is going to have a major impact on your life or finances, the cost is going to be almost nothing when compared to all your other legal expenses for the trial.
You could take screen shots instead, but that would be labor-intensive and the files would be unsearchable and as you figured out, screen shots would not display a time stamp next to each message since Messages just doesn't work that way. Screen shots can also be particularly wasteful of paper since it is not real text, the font size cannot be reduced and the text cannot rewrap. It's fixed with all kinds of GUI around it taking up space. I don't know though, maybe the court would prefer those since they're not editable as text. Ask your lawyer.
I've never had to use PhoneView for legal reasons, but I just like to use it as an easy way to archive texts, voicemails, and phone records in case something happens to your phone.
If you are a Mac guy, check out PhoneView. It does a whole bunch of awesome things including letting you export SMS and MMS messages to your Mac so you can do whatever you want with them.
Next, just paste it in an email to yourself with copy/paste. Bring up you email via the HTML file then print your iPhone text message on computer.
It's worked pretty well for me.
<Link Edited by Host>
There are 3rd party utilities that provide for extracting data from your iPhone's backup including SMS which are included with your iPhone's backup that is updated by iTunes as the first step during the iTunes sync process.
Here is one.
In fact, it is very easily to print out text messages from iPhone device. First, you need to transfer text messages from iPhone to computer. Then you can print out your iPhone text messages by printer on computer. Due to you can't transfer text messages from iPhone to computer. You need to use iPhone transfer tool to move text messages from iPhone to computer. I have a recommendation for you: MobiKin Assistant for iOS. Hope this helps!
HI Bsample,
There are a few ways to go, here I introduce two of them.
1. Back up your text messages when you sync your iPhone, When it is done, go to iTunes` app data folder in File Explorer. Enter "C:\\Users\\XXXX\\AppData\\Roaming" on the address line (replace XXXX with your Windows username) and press "Enter." Look for a file with an ".mdbackup" or ".mddata" extension, and copy it to a safe place. That file contains the message database and can be viewed and printed in Notepad or any other plain text editor.
2. If you feel iTunes is not convenient enough, you can try some third-party tools to print text messages from iPhone to computer, which can export their text messages to their computer as MHT format in a short time. You can search those softwares on google .
Hope this helps!
An easy way to access and print text messages from iPhone is to email it to yourself.
Open the SMS message that you want to print;
tap and hold the message for a couple of seconds.
Tap the "Copy" button to copy the message text to the clipboard. Open the "Mail" app on your iPhone, enter your email address in the "To" field and then tap inside the message body text box and tap the "Paste" button when it appears to paste the contents of the text message.
Tap "Send," open the email on your desktop computer and print it out on your local printer.
You should note, though, that the time and date information does not transfer when you copy and paste the SMS message in an email.
How do you backup a text message to your Mac AND THEN get access to that message on your Mac. Please explain this in detail, THANKS.
Capt. Arty wrote:
How do you backup a text message to your Mac AND THEN get access to that message on your Mac. Please explain this in detail
See my earlier detailed post in this thread, about PhoneView. You plug the iPhone into the Mac, PhoneView archives the iPhone's messages, voicemails, etc, and you will be able to read and search the archived text messages even when the phone is not connected to the Mac. If you still need more detail, watch the movie on the PhoneView site:
How do I print texts on iPhone?
