iOS 6 deleted my text messages and iMessages

Hi,

My question now is after you recovered your 40000 sms, what about the new messages on the phone? Will they be merged will the old sms.

Thanks.

I had received 2 new text messages, and yes, they merged with the messages I restored. Only thing is that I had to go back and add some contacts to messages with just a number. For some reason my newer contacts were not listing (even though the program pulled the names) I had not backed up contacts in about 2 months, so I remembered who the messages were from by reading them.

you never backed up....

Not sure what to do now. has anybody managed to restore their "lost" msgs along with whatever new msgs they've accumulated since this issue presented?

As I understand it, (other than mistertmac) if you use back-up trans or the other software, you will lose whatever msgs you've racked up since that point.

In my case I had 4-5yrs worth of msgs, but couldn't restore them, so I gave up and started new. That was in End November or whenever the new OS came out.

I'm now revisiting the possibility, but not sure if my msgs which I've accumulated since that point will be merged with that paid restore option.

I'm not exactly keen on paying $20 or whatever it is to restore all those msgs, but forfeit the most recent (and otherwise relatively important) msgs of the past few months.

Sigh.....any help is appreciated.

I have jsut noticed lots of deleted text messages so am trying to follow the above to restore older ones which have disappeared since updating to iOS6. How do I back the phone up to the iOS5 update? Through the phone/through update in iTunes? Not sure....thanks

I had this same problem when updating my iPhone 4 to iOS 6 today. Found this thread and it was helpful, however, iExplorer requires you to buy a license to recover the sms which costs $34.99. Found another free alternative for Mac or Windows, Dr.Fone. Worked like a charm and I didn't have to grab my wallet.

You mean you want to recover the deleted iPhone text messages, right? I happen to get good solution for this, you can read this:

Recover Deleted Text Messages from iPhone

Only 3 steps are needed:

Step 1: Launch and Choose iTunes Files for Scanning

Step 2: Preview and Mark the Target Files

Step 3: Begin to Recover

I have tried and it works, you can have a try!

When I downloaded the new iOS 6 software, it deleted all of my text messages and iMessages. Is there anyway I can get them back?

Too sad, so many people are having this issue.

There is some software available, that can get you your messages back. For normal sms messages, try Get back iPhone sms messages and for iMessages, try Get back lost iMessages. Check their reviews and compatibility etc, to be sure.

If you had a backup, you can restore back from iTunes backup: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

I agree. BackupTrans really did the trick for me! Thank you (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5280433)

walerina wrote:

You mean you want to recover the deleted iPhone text messages, right? I happen to get good solution for this, you can read this:

Recover Deleted Text Messages from iPhone

Only 3 steps are needed:

Step 1: Launch and Choose iTunes Files for Scanning

Step 2: Preview and Mark the Target Files

Step 3: Begin to Recover

I did this and it worked PERFECTLY! Thank you so much! I was getting extremely frustrated and you fixed it!

Cray7 wrote:

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.

Hello guys!

I just bought "BackupTrans iPhone SMS Backup And Restore" and I managed to get back my sms!

I admit that I did not belived that in first place but I gave the 30 euros and bought it.

I managed to get back my sms and to unify them with me new ones. You just have to have your old database.

SMS/MMS are not synced with an application on your computer or included with the iTunes sync process in any way except for being included with your iPhone's backup which is updated by iTunes as the first step during the iTunes sync process. The data included with the iPhone's backup is not stored in your iTunes library. This link provides the data on your iPhone that is included with your iPhone's backup.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

Copied from my previous post.

There are a number of 3rd party utilities that provide for extracting select data from your iPhone's backup on your computer for access to the data on your computer for archiving or printing, etc. Here is one of them.

http://mobilesyncbrowser.com/