iOS 6 deleted my text messages and iMessages

Same thing happened to me. No messages, no contacts, nothing. My husband is going to kill me since it's his phone! What can I do?

On mine, I have only lost messages from organisations that don't use a number in their SMS, but display an actual name... such as FROM: T-Mobile rather than FROM: +441234567890

I can see the last message in the message preview (the message inbox screen), but when I select the message there is no conversation history.

My entire message is there in Inbox but when I am click on specific msg then it get deleted automatically... I lost almost 20-25 Important Messages.. Apple not done .. Please help ...I am using Apple Iphone 4..

I have the exact same problem as you,

Is there any fix for this?

I turned my Iphone back off and on and the messages (preview) reappear in the inbox screen, thats about it ... This has happened with all my o2/Orange/Barclays and Carphone warehouse messages :\

update: I figured out how to restore my texts. First, i had to check to see if my last backup was still available for installed the iOS 6 on my phone (iPhone 4). Then I restored my phone back to factory settings. Once I did that, i had the options to make the phone new or use my last backup. I selected my last back up and everything came back except for my music (which i didn't care about that). I just wanted all of my texts back.

so you all can try and see if that will for you.

1)Check your backup and see if you still have the backup before the update

2) Restore to factory setting

3) Select your last backup then everything from that back up should come back

BUT if you did you back up after the iOS 6 then you might not retrieve anything you had before.

Hi ,

I cannot read messages that are sent by Corportes eg. ADairtel etc.

Hope apple has a fix for this

Same here!! Dammit ! Can't make a software without stupid problems!!

Apple will die after steve ........

I have had the same problem, I tried to backup my phone then restore it but my old messages still aren't there, any new messages come through but existing ones I can't see.

Please see my reply to this post if you need to recover your messages ASAP. They will not be accessable through iphone but you may get the text if you really need it.

I've spent past eight hours debugging this issue and I've learned this:

What causes this:

- Backups made to iTunes or iCloud with iOS 5 contain valid SMS database (actually sms.db file on iPhone)

- Backups made to iTunes or iCloud with iOS 6 contain also a valid SMS database but in different db format

Issue here is that Apple updated internal database schema (sms database is actually a SQLite3 database on iPhone) of sms.db to consolidate SMS and iMessage data to same database table.

What iOS 6 backup restore does is that if finds old iOS 5 database file restored, it tries to convert the file to iOS6 format. Fortunately this conversion (obviously) sometimes fails partially or completely (all messages lost, like me) and it ends up creating new empty database in iOS 6 format for Messages app. And this results the issue experienced here.

I was able to verify this by interrupting iOS 6 backup restoration (restoring backup made with iOS 5) right after it had copied all files, but before it started conversion scripts (right after the last phone reboot in restore). The iOS 5 originated SMS database was fully working and intact on the phone (good news: your iOS 5 backups in iCloud and iTunes are still ok), but when the conversion scripts were allowed to run.. that resulted in empty iOS 6 format SMS database. Clearly the conversion script failed to bring messages to iOS 6 format database somehow.

What I am going to do:

I am going to hold on to whatever iOS 5 iCloud or iTunes backups of my phone (do not overwrite or lose them). Then I am going to wait for next iOS 6 update, where Apple engineers have fixed this issue. Good thing here is that the backups are ok, the restoration process just fails - so theoretically iOS update fixing the db conversion would allow me to restore all of my message history from current backups.

What you are going to do:

File a bug report to Apple. 😉

*sigh*

I may have found the slution for us all but you need to pay for s stupid program to fix the problem....midn you I did not pay for it yet since I might now need to restore mine, here's a link of the program that I found that restores all the older itunes backups on your ps(Yes, this program shows ALL of the restores) read the whole page please then click the second link to the software page:

Info on the program:
http://www.prlog.org/10436636-mobilesyncbrowser-31-introduces-groundbreaking-bac kup-management-features.html

Program $20USD...ouch:
http://msb.macsupport-pr.com/download.html

The real problem is not getting message data exported out from iPhone backup - there are many utilities for that - but getting the Messages restored back to iOS 6 iPhone. As far as I can see even MobileSyncBrowser is not capable of doing that.

We want to restore lost messages back to the iPhone. The solution is not getting a data dump of your messages to a computer. The used iTunes backup extractor utility does not matter.

Cray7, the article mentioned a restore feature does that not restore the data back Onto your iPhone.

Sejo87,

Exactly. Thats why those iTunes backup management utilities are not the real solution to this issue.

Real solution is Apple fixing their post-restore and post-install scripts/software that convert iOS 5 version sms.db to iOS 6 version sms.db. Hopefully in the next point release. Before that all you can do is dump out the data from your backup and its iOS 5 formatted sms.db with various tools - as suggested by many here.

Just to list few of those (not issue solving) utilities here:

PhoneView - http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/

iBackupBot - http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm

MobileSyncBrowser - http://mobilesyncbrowser.com

iPhone SMS Backup - http://www.iphone-sms.com (an online tool for converting manually extracted sms.db files)

iPhone Backup Extractor - http://www.iphonebackupextractor.com

iPhone SMS Backup script - https://github.com/amlweems/iphone-sms-backup (this is fork of original with iOS6 compatibility)

iPhone/iPod Backup Extractor - http://supercrazyawesome.com (for devs mostly)

In addition to those mentioned above you can always manually copy (do not move) the file named "3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28" from your iTunes backup folder and rename it to "sms.db". Backups are located at your [user]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ and the file is in regular SQLite3 database format. There are many SQLite3 browser utilities available in Mac App store to browse that file.

For those interested, the filenames in backup folder are SHA1 hashes of the Domain+Filename on iOS device. For example SHA1 hash for "HomeDomain-Library/SMS/sms.db" is "3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28".

I am currently testing different iOS 5 sms.db databases and see what is the exact cause for iOS 6 conversion failure. Some sms.db databases convert perfecly, some partially and some completely fail. I'm trying to find what is the actual difference that makes certain databases iOS 6 conversion fail on post-restore and post-install processing.

I *really* want years worth of messages back to my updated iPhone 😉 Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like the solution is either extreme iOS hacking or official bug fix from Apple.

I had the same problem as you (with the error message that said I didn't have enough space on my phone). I found a solution - well, at least it worked for me - restore your phone to its factory settings, not from the backup. Then, when you connect your phone, to iTunes after the restore, you can put your saved backup onto it. 🙂