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Photos in iMessages/SMS are missing

Hi, Everyone!


I've noticed that since updating to iOS 8.0.2 but before updating to 8.1.0, photos are missing in text & iMessage threads.


Here's how I noticed it:

On Friday of last week, I was looking at old pictures dating back to October 2013 in the detail view on a text message thread on my iPhone 5S, running iOS 8.0.2. Everything was there -- no problems.


Fast forward to Sunday evening: I decided to forward a photo I had stumbled upon Friday night, but this time in detail view every few pictures in the same thread were replaced with two overlapping blue rectangles in a white box. When you click them you just see a grey background with the file name and file type in blue. When you look at the picture in the conversation, it appears as a white box with a blue question mark. (see attached screenshot of all three instances).


This is happening in iMessage conversation as well as strictly Text Messages, and files are missing from both sides of the conversations. There are even some photos that are missing in the conversation but are still sitting safe and sound in my camera roll!


No settings were changed between Friday to Sunday evening-no automatic updates, battery didn't die, didn't reset my phone or drop it, etc.

Messages have been set to save forever. I have iCloud turned on for Photos.


Any ideas on why this is happening?


I have since upgraded (last night 10/20/14) to iOS 8.1 AND have reset all settings to see if it would solve the problem. Space isn't an issue--I have 3 GB of free space currently. No such luck! 😢


User uploaded file

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.1

Posted on Oct 21, 2014 3:15 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 15, 2014 9:09 AM

Having the same issue on iPhone 5. I went to the Apple store and they did a iCloud backup restore and it didn't work. They said a few people had been in with the same issue. I think that since photos take up a lot of space that they might do this from time to time and just never address the issue. Oh, and for some reason the only iCloud backup I had available was after the problem started, the other older back ups were gone. If you get an important txt message picture be sure to save it to camera roll and back up on PC. I've turned off my iCloud and iMessage and going old school with PC backups.

144 replies

Apr 2, 2015 11:57 PM in response to Ads_N

Hi,


I'm sorry if you got confused. The problem "mix fix" solved was that the pictures that was send as imessage was not displayed Correctly but showed as blank boxes with a ? Inside.


after running the sequence i described, the pictures received was displayed correctly but old pictures remained blanked out.


Br, Nick

Apr 5, 2015 11:33 PM in response to whitogreen

Way 1. Recover Deleted Text Messages on iPhone with Backups

1) Recover Deleted Text Messages on iPhone from iTunes

As you know, every time you sync your iPhone with iTunes, it will automatically make a backup of your iPhone contents including photos, SMS, reminders, contacts and more. Step 1. Download and install PhoneRescue, Launch it > Connect your iPhone to your computer. Step 2. Choose "Recover form Backup" option. Step 3. Select a backup you need. If you don't know which one to choose, you'd better choose the latest backup. Step 4. Click "Start Scan". Step 5. Preview contents in details and select deleted text messages you need. Step 6. Click "Recover".

Compare with restoring whole backup from iTunes, this recovery from iTunes backup allows you only select messages to recover and you can also preview messages detailed information, like content, data and so on.

2) Recover Deleted Text Messages on iPhone from iCloud Backup

You should make sure that you have backup in iCloud before recovery. Go to Settings < iCloud. Log in to your Apple ID and toggle the Contacts switch from ON to OFF. Then turn it ON and choose Merge on the pop-up message. Then all contacts in the iCloud backup are back to your iPhone 4S.

Way 2. Recover Deleted Text Messages on iPhone without Backups

While if you don’t have any backup filesin iTunes or iCloud, can you recover deleted text messages on iPhone? The unique way is to recover with PhoneRescue. Step 1. Connect your iPhone to the computer and Run PhoneRescue. Step 2. Click "Start Scan" > Scan data on your iPhone quickly. Step 3. Preview and select contacts you need. Step 4. Click "Recover" to recover them.

Apr 8, 2015 2:17 PM in response to Ads_N

This is happening to me now too.....

but only on one of my iPhone 5S's (I have 2).

The only difference I can find between them,

(and this makes sense to me) is the photo settings.

"Settings"

"Camera & Photos"

Choices there to select are:

[Optimize iPhone storage]

<OR>

[Download & keep original]

On phone 1, (this issue isn't happening)

I have the, "DL & keep OG" set.

On phone 2,

(the one that the pix are turning to

file clips with "?" on them) I have the,

"Optimize iPhone storage" set

I am going to change the settings once I

save my pix and see what happens.

Might be the cause?? Idk!?

JUst a try.

May 7, 2015 10:23 PM in response to whitogreen

It is May 2015.

My iPhone 5S 32 GB started having this problem since January 2015.

5 months later, i still see "?" marks for all photos received and sent before January 2015.


Why hasn't Apple found a solution yet?

I'm running on iOS 8.3 and none of the updates since January have done anything to fix it.


My biggest worry is that all the photos received and sent after January will suddenly disappear just like the ones before January....

May 19, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Ads_N

I have an Iphone 5c and this happened to me May 12 2015. Called Apple and they wanted to charge me 29.99 to try to look into it. My husband and i have had nothing but bad luck with our phones since we bought them. Dont know if i will buy another one ever! Very disappointed with thisand the service we received from Apple. Lost many photos. My text message display has a grey screen with the image of a square that resembles a picture. When you click on that it says IMg 0623 JPG and under neigh that it says JPEG image and no picture. Wont do anything when you tap on it. Iphone message photos that were sent or received before May 12th are all missing!! All photos that ive taken since 5/12/15 are still there. This is really disappointing!!! Doesnt sound like its an important issue with Apple after reading all the issues people are having since Sep/Oct of last year.

May 29, 2015 1:36 PM in response to ShirazB

Since my previous post i have fixed my issue with pictures missing from e-mails and text messages showing as a blue outline square with a ? in the centre.

This is what i found:-

In Settings> Messages> Send & Receive I found my e-mail address & phone number were in there twice, I deleted the duplicate entry and after rebooting phone just in case I now receive e-mails and message with pictures as per normal.

I hope this helps other with the same problem.

Jun 27, 2015 2:06 PM in response to Rj4infinity

The exact same thing as everyone else has described has happened on my iphone 4s. I thought maybe it was only happening to the pics sent from Android users, but I noticed it is text messages sent from both iphone and android.


I have lost most all my pictures that were in my text message history, which were a lot. There are only a couple that are still there for whatever reason.

I have reset, I have checked the icloud, and no such luck, and I am afraid to update my IOS, but from the sounds of everyone else's experience on this forum, there has been no solution yet.


I've become very disappointed in my iphone, not the first time that I have lost contacts, pictures, text messages etc., due to the icloud...I think. I have also since turned off iCloud, and iMessage. I am so upset that I lost all those pictures of family and friends, especially because I thought Apple products don't get "bugs", virus', etc. Was really looking forward to finally upgrading to the 6, but not sure how much longer I can stay with the iphone especially since it is so unreliable, and one never knows when important stuff will just disappear. Good luck with yours, and Thanks for letting me vent!!!

Aug 17, 2015 12:07 AM in response to vway

definitely this is an answer I'm LOOKING FOR! thanks so much. its work now... turn off FIND MY PHONE then sign out all accounts on old after back up the data... then restore the back up on new iphone...


actually was transfer all data to my new ITOUCH (iPod) from my old itouch...



follow vway message and the link... hope this help you...

Sep 2, 2015 8:31 PM in response to vway

vway seems to be describing a different issue -- his was with new incoming pics -- most of us are describing an issue with older pics.


I am experiencing this issue with a 4S (message attachments prior to mid May 2015 just show up as icons). I tried both Wondershare's Dr. Fone and fonepaw's iPhone Data Recovery to look at both iCloud backup and directly at my iPhone but unfortunately the only attachments it showed were the ones from recently. On a possibly related note, when attaching my phone to either a PC or Mac and opening iTunes (something I had previously never done since I do not have any music on my phone), I got this error "iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone "Mrw13's iPhone". Go to the Summary tab in iPhone preferences and click Restore to restore this iPhone to factory settings."

I did call Apple Support but all they suggest was doing a restore from my iCloud backup but I have a feeling that doing so would wipe out even the tiny chance of recovering the missing attachments since its very unlikely that they are in the iCloud backup.

Nov 26, 2015 11:12 PM in response to vway

This started to happen to me back in 2011 and those pic's are still not back.

iMessage was not the case back then, so the pictures i trying to get back dates back to 2010 and are sent via regular SMS.


Don't have any backups left on iTunes since i bought a new computer and didn't think to move my iTunes backups..


Anyone found a fix for this yet? There's thread on MacRumors from 2011 that also addresses this issue.

Dec 6, 2015 2:37 PM in response to Jonatan.Berndtsson

I, too, am having the same issue. I've been going through and deleting sms messages to make room on my phone and as the photos would appear after they were pulled down from iCloud, I was able to save the photos. When I got to messages around 2011, all the photos have a ?. I do have old iTunes backup and the same thing is happening. I've read several forums on this and it appears there is no fix and I have to accept all the photos are gone. Huge disappointment Apple.

Photos in iMessages/SMS are missing

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