I have lost all my text message and iMessage history since the beginning of having an iPhone (several years!) just by updating to iOS6. Has anyone else had the same problem? Can it be resolved?
Thanks
iPhone 4S, iOS6
You can try and retrieve your texts by checking for backups.
Go to Edit>Preferences>Devices and see if there are any recent backups of your phone.
If there are, we can try and restore.
If not, then you won't be able to recover them.
Do I do this on my phone or on the computer? I'm not sure where I'm meant to go...
On your computer.
Are you using a Windows PC or a Mac?
on my mac. It says there was a backup at 2:49pm, but I think all the messages would be from a backup about half an hour before that... before I first installed iOS6 on the phone. I made sure I did the backup before the install...
how can all the messages just have evaporated? This has never happened before when I have updated software.
You can try restoring from the backup to see, but if no messages come back, then they are indeed gone.
Are you from Apple? I also have a backup on iCloud from 10:19am today.... but that keeps saying it will take 4 hours... should I try that instead of backing up from iTunes?
plus it has all of my call history right up until i updated... so the sync must be working? or is the call history from a separate data file that is not part of the sync/backup somehow?
No I am just really good with Apple products.
You can try the iCloud backup as well but its at your discretion.
The call history is contained in the backup but I would still check to see if your messages are there.
I'll try the iCloud backup and let you know what happens - hopefully a better result!
Fingers crossed!
I, too, have lost everything -- spoke with tons of Apple Reps -- each told me something different to do -- each time the phone was connected and disconnected, it would save over the last back-up so from the time the download at 6:22 p.m. till now 4:15 a.m.- I have yet to have my contacts restored and have worthless backups. Backing up nothing is just that -- backing up nothing. It is disheartening that something like this could even happen. Hopefully, the "big guys" will have another option but I fear they will not be able to help me because if 4-5 people already couldn't -- well, its not looking good.
What I did do was "import from sim" and got the email addresses for many but not the phone numbers. So I expect I will be sending emails to ask for phone numbers for the email addresses I do have. This is only a fraction of what was lost and I need my contacts back - this is not cool.
My coworker and friend lost all of her contacts when she up graded to iOS 6. A disaster for her.
The problem for my friend was that she innocently had not set up iCloud nor had she backed up to iTunes. Though I am technical and know the difference, she is not and did not. The result is that many people like her, probably in the millions, don't really understand how iCloud and back up to iTunes works. Of course, the biggest crime is that Apple might ignore the possibility that people have not backed up and create an update that has the possibility of causing a user to lose all of their local data. That's unconscionable. Heads should roll.
I'm also lost all my sms for 7 years! They be with me from winmobile :(
Last backup -4 days ago. ((( when restore from them - what info i'm lose?
Unexpected and painful blow. Disappointed
I also lost all of my contacts and messages. When I plugged my iPhone 3gs into my computer to try to restore it with my last backup, it synced and overwrote the last backup. Figures. Guess they're gone forever now.
The problem for me was that some time in the past year I had changed the e-mail address for my Apple ID, but it had not changed in my iCloud settings. So, it has been trying to connect to the wrong e-mail address this whole time, meaning it hasn't actually been backing up anything. Luckily, most of my contacts were backed up on my computer. As for the messages, I don't think those will be coming back.
Lost all text and iMessages in iOS6 update
