how to recover imessage history

Hi,

At this point I find I have loads in the Archive folder.

I took to copying the iChat folder and moving that to the Archive as well.

However in any Chat in the Messages window I can only seem to go back to when I installed Yosemite and not access the Mavericks or earlier ones.

However double clicking my oldest ichat ones (2004) they will open in separate windows.

Sometimes that does show the most recent iMessages or IMs in the Main window if they are more recent.

People have complained about the amount of time it takes to scroll a long chat (or a contact that has had multiple chats over years) as it joins them together.

It would seem Apple have made the decision it should be time limited without giving you any control over it.

i.e previously a chat could show the "last chat" (a whole Session) in an open window or the last 25 IMs or similar or everything it could find from the same Buddy.

There is obviously something about older saved chats that separates them for showing in Yosemite.

I find it annoying myself for Buddies going back that long.

Using the contextual menu and Open or Open with does not change the separate window for older chats behaviour.

10:09 pm Sunday; March 22, 2015

Hi,

If you mean the option to use Terminal to correct the Ownership and Permissions then read this Thread:-

Reset Home Folder permissions and ACLs Error

Read the whole Thread as Linc posts a Check method before the green box marked Solved answer that gives the Permissions and Ownership instructions.

7:56 pm Sunday; December 13, 2015

Hi,

We should be looking in the longer path of ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages

See Path Bar of this pic.

8:23 pm Sunday; March 22, 2015

Hi,

As I was explaining to Old Toad I have been having issues around this specific area myself.

In my case I know why - I did a particular Update to the OS and therefore Messages in July 2014.

I did not spot the issue until much later when trying to find the "history" of the chats with one of my regular Buddies (it was an AIM conversation).

What this seems to have create is some files in ~/Library/Messages that are "older" chat.db items that are marked as incompatible.

In looking at them only yesterday I can see that they also have info about the Saved chats.

I presume that this is why and manually selecting an Old chat can open to view it but it will not become part of the "history" of chats with current people.

I can view the current chats I tend to keep open in Messages back to the update date in July 2014.

I have seen one fix on line that refers to the use of Terminal at a specific point in time based on the Incompatible File version and the Darwin (The very base of the OS) that was in use at the time.

As I was unaware of this at the time I have not attempted it as my Darwin version has since been updated to the one in use in Yosemite.

I also have iChat Saved files going back to 2004.

The Messages beta would also read these in there original position in ~/Documents/iChats.

Full Messages apps since have not done this.

I have tried moving all of these to the Archive Folder (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages) but to no avail.

Even the Updates since have not rescanned this folder and added all the extra files or even the older ones that used to appear.

I did read a thread yesterday where someone else had the Archive folder also in ~/Library/Messages when new ones were being saved to the ~/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages one (It what made me look at this again).

I think merging the current chat.db set of files with the incompatible ones may provide me with some progress but I don't have the tools to do this.

I also can't find the site I was looking at before.

There does not seem to be a way of re-indexing the Archive folder that I can find.

8:42 p.m. Friday; June 19, 2015

Hi,

The x in this pic only dismisses the chat from view

The chat will come back if it is iMessages or if you Save Chats if it is another type of account.

These keystrokes or the selection of "Delete Conversation" will remove it from your records.

If...

It is a big if as well. If the Saved Chat is not that old then double clicking it will open it in both it's own window and the main window of Messages.

8:29 pm Friday; May 20, 2016

Hi,

If the Chat is on the iPhone and the Mac (iTunes) has a Backup there are apps and utilities about that are supposed to be able to extract them.

It is not something I have done and I see two posts on this matter have been deleted from this Thread already.

8:02 pm Monday; March 23, 2015

Juste wanted to add something to this,

in case you have started in the middle of the process your imessage,

you have to remove the "new" files created into ~/Library/Preferences with ichat and imessage extensions.

voilà!

"If You Find Out Can you please let me know?! I REALLY WANT MY IMESSAGE CHAT BACK B/C MY FRIEND PAST AWAY ;/ Only Memory i have left...

Hi Ralph,

This thread has been very helpful up to the part where you describe the double click on a saved chat opening the both the main Messages window and a separate window..

I am running El Capitan 10.11.6. My problem is Messenger does not display the messages from 10 Jan 2017 to 11 Feb 2017. All new messages sent or received after 11 Feb 2017 are showing up correctly. (As background my problem started when I accidentally erased all my Messages on El Capitan - I misunderstood how OnyX Message log delete worked. However I successfully restored my chat.db chat.db-shm chat.db-wal and Archive from backups up to 10 Jan 2017. Now I am trying to add-in the chats for the missing period.)

I have located the Archive folder (~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Archive) and have validated all the missing messages are there.

However, when I double click on the message, it opens a separate Messages window and displays the chat correctly, but the messages are not opened in the main Messages window - hence Messages is not sequencing them into the chat or preserving a view of them.

Any suggestions.

Thanks and Regards

Zoran

Good to hear.

9:03 pm Friday; January 3, 2014

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

Glad to see this, and to hear it worked for bwadma.

I know how to get into the ~Library folder on my mac ("Go" menu with option key)

But... how do I get into the ~Library folder on Time Machine? That's where I need to pull the backup from, right?

tks

JS

Dear Ralph,

I have a similar problem with deleted iMessages.

I deleted by mistake complete chating on iMessage on my Mac. Actually, I was using my Mac on chating using message, naturally, through my iPhone 5.

I tried to restore my iPhone, however, it restored my iMessages but to only certain date. I need the complete chat.

The problem is that I have 2 iphones; one is 5 & other is 5s and use them both on chating on message using the Mac.

I am really at loss at how to retrieve or restore the complete set of chat from this specfic contact.

Would appreciate your help and advise.

Thanks

Ralph:

I had to restore Yosemite 10.10.2 yesterday via the Recovery volume. When I opened Messages all of the messages and threads were missing.

I've tried restoring the ~/Library/Messages folder with no success.

I created and sent a new message but didn't see any change to the contents of the ~/Library/Messages folder,

Where are the messages and threads stored so I can restore them from my Time Machine backup? Or am I going about this the wrong way?

I've looked at all of those folders and files and have read and write access. However, I do not have an Archive folder in the Messages folder and didn't see one in the various Time Machine backups I looked thru.

Checked in the archive folder and all of the chats are there including the few I did in the last two days. However, they are the only chats that show up in the Messages window.

All of the chat files are in the Archive folder but are not being displayed in the Messages window. Just the most recent. Checked permissions on the Archive folder and contents and I have R & W access.

Any idea on how to get them into Messages? They're all there on the iPhone.