how to recover imessage history

I have all of the individual chats in the archive folder as .ichat files and can view each by double clicking on them. How can I get them back into the Messages app so they are there when Messages is opened?

Hi,

That is the bit I am struggling with myself at the moment.

I can only look back at anything that was "Saved" after I installed Yosemite and not before.

Looking at Time Machine in the same Folder I can see there are Older Chats but I cannot get back past the Yosemite Upgrade date.

I had been unaware of this until today when I was checking something else.

I am going to have to look in to this some more.

9:22 pm Monday; March 23, 2015

I had to repair my Yosemite OS X, after that I lost all my Messages Chats, my buddies are all there, but without any chat history ..

I checked my Archive, old and new chats are still there.

Maybe someone has a solution to recover my message texts in the Messages app on my Mac.

Your messages in this thread have been really helpful, so thank you. I am trying to get my full iMessage history into Messages on my Macbook which is running Yosemite. Here's my issue:

-On 20/03 I started using this macbook, without transferring any old data from other laptops to it.

-At that point I could see all my iMessage history in Messages, even conversations from BEFORE 20/03. Ideal!

-On 10/05 I transferred the contents of my old MacBook (running snow leopoard, never had Messages on it) onto this new one. From then on in Messages I could only see conversations from 10/05 onwards.

-Using your instructions above I tried to bring the files from the old "deleted user" (aka my profile from 20/03 - 10/05) to my current user profile.

-I think I know where I went wrong. When I dragged the three chat.db files from library/messages of the deleted user to the same folder of the current user, it recognised that they were the same file name of course, and when asked if I wanted to "change" or "replace," I chose replace. Now naturally the only messages showing up are the ones from 20/03-10/05, plus any news ones coming in today. I probably should have changed the old file names to ..._old and added them to the folder with the current .db files. But I didn't.

Assuming that is indeed the problem, is there any way to get back the old chat.db files that I replaced? Assume I'm a moron and didn't back-up before I started messing around.

I now also have the issue you mentioned with images not displaying in-line which was never a problem before, even looking at conversations that were several months old. Now even when I click on them they do not open. I send & receive a lot of pics so this is a big deal to me.

Also messed up now is the sequencing of messages in some conversations, so for example it will display messages from 11 April then 3 March then 19 March.

Here's the current state of my files:

-In my ~/library/messages/archive folder I can see a subfolder for every day, 20/03 to now.

-In my ~/library/messages/attachments folder I have everything that has been in there since 20/05 plus a new subfolder, also called attachments, that came from the same file path of the deleted user (me from 20/03-10/05).

-All of those archive and attachment folders and subfolders are ALSO under ~/library/containers/com.apple.ichat/data/library/messages/

Should they live in both places like that? How should I proceed?

Ultimately, all I want is to be able to see within Messages all the conversation history that I can see on my iPhone. I back-up my iPhone onto my computer. Surely there must be some way to "push" the message history from my phone (or back-up or iCloud) into the Messages application? It must have happened once because when I started using the computer on 20/03 I could see message history going back months prior! I just want to get back to that. Thank you so very much!!

DM

I only occasionally use Messages. Now that I decided to use it instead of iPhone itself to engage in a long conversation, I noticed that there is a gap in my iMessage history in Messages. Seems that the last iMessages it has stored are from four months ago. I haven't changed anything in Messages Preferences since I first synced it with my iPhone and I've used iMessage continuously on my iPhone. All the iMessages from the sync point until four months ago are intact and after I now wrote the first iMessage in Messages, it syncs perfectly whether writing or receiving iMessages from my phone or Mac.

Any ideas what may have gone wrong during the last four months and is there a way for me to recover that history in Messages?

Understood.

9:22 p.m. Thursday; August 13, 2015

Dear Friends,

I have recently restored macbook pro from Time Machine backup, the backup was done 1 month ago, so the mac is what is was 1 month ago.

however I can't see my iMessage history after the period of system restoration point, so I am missing 1 months of iMessages conversation history.

I can see all the history on my iPhone tho. My iPhone is currently backed to iCloud in full.

Please advice.

Thanks in anticipation

Regards

Arash

No Worries Migration

hey there Ralph,

I was hoping you'd help me out on a minor issue. I accidentally deleted my iMessage conversation on my iMac (I have the conversation synced with my phone though) and despite having "save history when conversations are closed" this didn't help, since I deleted the conversation.

Is there a way to sync up my iMessages together again? I have located the history through the folder search above but I really can't do much with single days iMessages as it's tedious to click on each to see what part of the message I want to look at. But if I'm not mistaken this is the exact problem you're tackling, and I'm just wondering if there's a change and you've found a way to overcome this problem. Or, since I have the conversation synced with my iPhone, is there a way to import that conversation on my Mac iMessages?

It's funny how something so trivial like recovering an accidentally deleted conversation can be so hard to recover back on the Mac.

Hello,

I am restoring my Mac in a week and would like my iMessages (and photos, documents etc on my Mac) to be restored when I restore the Mac. I am currently using OS X Yosemite (version 10.10.5) and have never backed-up or restored my Mac, so I have no idea on the process of restoring nor how I would go to restore my iMessages.

Could someone please help me out (in simplistic steps); and just tell me the steps I will need to do (i.e. backup, what needs to be saved? and how to restore them).

Any help would be much appreciated.😕🙂

Thank-you!

That's great, pretty simple then really. Thanks so much for an in-depth and fast reply! 🙂

As for iMessages and my chat history, will they be automatically restored if i back up to Time Machine and use the backup to restore my things whether on the same Mac or another?

(I am having problems with my Mac and will try restore, but if that doesn't work I might need to take it to Apple/use my insurance to get a replacement)

Thanks again ✅

Hi,

I would tend to back up but then use the Internet option to Restore the OS and Apple Apps.

This leaves third party apps like Office or games alone as well as the Users folders (the one with the Little House icon and any other folder inside the Users Folder).

Consequences.

Notes really.

"Having Problems" is not really that specific.

For instance turning Off the AppleGothic Font causes the Messages app not to launch.

Removing Helvetica affects a whole load more and can then look like a major issue.

If in the Font Book they are turned Off then this info about the settings is kept in the Preferences folder in your Home Folder.

As this is untouched in any Restore the problem will not go away.

There are the odd Font that can cause conflicts with others an cause similar symptoms. the latest I have heard about on this front is the San Francisco Font.

There are other items that people think seem to do nothing that can have major consequences if removed.

8:11 pm Saturday; December 5, 2015

Dear Ralph,

Many thanks for your detailed advise!

I am currently using OS X 10.11.2 and would love to know the way how to go about it on this version.

I only deleted 1 chat of a person on my MacBook.

Please help ASAP.

Kind regards,

Benedikt

Hello,

I started my computer up this morning and all of my Ichat messages were gone. I am having trouble in restoring the messages. I just got my computer about 2 months ago and do not have a time machine backup. However i did find my chat logs in the _library folder. I copied the messages(.Ichat) files and the attachments. How do i restore them to put them back into my messaging app. Any help would be appreciated.

Ok thanks for the reply. I have OS X El Capitan 10.11.5. I have Messages i would assume. Is there any way to restore my messages back? i can find them in my finder. When i reconnect to the person; it does not load the messages back up.

hi,

This thread was started three years ago.

Please start your own thread and state whether it is on an iPhone or Mac and which versions of the iOS or macOS and Messages version you are using.

8:19 pm Monday; December 19, 2016