Photos in iMessages/SMS are missing

Honestly, its the wifi connection. Like i said earlier this happened to me. I later found out that i had a lot videos which took time to restore when i used my home network. I waited for 5 days and nothing happened. but the moment i went back to the Apple store, re-did the whole restoring process plus the connection, everything restored within 2 hours. I know its very frustrating, i called Apple for support but they couldn't figure out what the problem was..but redoing the whole thing under a very strong network connection, helped me get back my 5000 photos and videos. Just give it a shot.

Thank you so much. I got a strong enough connection today and all of my photos are back on my phone!!

Your Awesome!

Brajhelle

Hello All,

I am encountering the same problem and I just updated to 8.2 and not only is this problem on my iPhone it all migrated to my OSX iMessages, which is in all honesty ridiculous.

Regarding "solutions" in this thread I would urge non-technical users to refrain from suggesting"solutions" which have nothing to do with the actual problem. The problem is not a wi-fi connection, it is an underlying path problem or database problem, internal to the iMessages app. I havent been able to pin point the issue, but it is an issue nonetheless.

Furthermore, the type of backup is also essential to a "soution". If your backup was on iCloud then yes, you need a **consistent** wi-fi connection to avoid timeouts, and get all your stuff off the cloud. But if your backup is an iTunes backup such as mine, then a wifi connection is totally irrelevant.

Today I noticed the same on iMessages on my mac and know I know for a fact that there is some corruption at the database level. Since it seems that this issue has no common denominator, anyone stumbling upon this thread, backup your images now.

Having an iTunes backup be non-reliable is a huge issue. Please anyone with the same issue keep this thread updated just in case something comes up that solves this problem.

Cheers,

Fotis

Hello once again,

A bit of a follow up on my recent findings.

I don't know about the rest of the users but I will explain my situation and maybe you can relate. I traced the problem down to a faulty backup & restore. The people in this thread that did not change a thing and noticed the problem, please let us know if you are backing up to iCloud.

Anyone backing up with iTunes here is what I found out. After seeing the problem on OSX iMessage I really started freaking out, and thought ok I have to get to the bottom of this. So my first instinct was to check the person "Details" and see if the attachments were available. As it so happens I was able to view the attachments from the "Details" view but not inline in the chat history on OSX iMessage. This led me to the conclusion that the files are there but the links are broken, so I wanted to check if the same was true for the iOS iMessage. So I thought, ok, when was the last time that I know for a fact that I had the photos in my chat history. As it turns out, this was right before I switched phones from 5 -> 6, I had done this about a month ago, so I was lucky enough to have that backup still available in my iTunes backups list. With this information I wanted to check if the attachments were there but not linked, or completely gone.

I used the software listed here (http://www.recovery-android.com/recover-messages-after-upgrading-to-ios-7.html) which allows me to scan the contents of the phone or of an existing backup and it lists the information available in there. First I scaned the backup I restored recently (when the problem first appeared) and after about 30minutes it listed 202 iMessage attachments, it actually allows you see the attachments using the Free Trial so no purchase is necessary, unless you want to extract the information.

I then re-did the procedure with the backup I was sure had the information and it listed 603 attachments. So as it happens the backup was actually corrupted. Now I don't know how iCloud backups work, but maybe between iTunes versions or iOS versions, they messed something up, and the continous backup and restore process had some form of glitch causing this problem.

I ended up restoring the backup with the 603 attachments and all the inline messages where there. After the sync process is complete, in about an hour or so, I am going to backup the phone again, and check that all the attachments are there in that backup.

This may be an acceptable scenario (fix) for anyone that has a recent backup and can confirm the existence of all of their missing attachments using the software linked above.

Best,

Fotis

Hi All,

Long time reader first time poster !

Unfortunately my iphone 5 running 8.1.2 has just fallen into the same category as the rest of the forum string. All SMS attachments bar about 3 out of 600 or so just went missing on me yesterday morning. I was not trying to do any IOS updates at the time however the last thing i done was hit the update all in my app store to update my apps. Which "may" of triggered something ?

Unfortunately the bad news for me is that every single jpeg is completely gone from the phone. My next issue is that Itunes being itunes likes to back up my phone as soon as i connect it and of course overwrites itself which is very clever indeed, there is now a screwed phone and a screwed backup. "lesson learned ... dont let it automagically back up and also remind ones self to perform a manual backup to a new file occasionally.

Being in this position i took a few extra steps to see if they were really gone or not ... SSH access to the phone (you know how) and searched the entire phone for my attachments (find / -name *.jpeg) and 3 were left the rest have completely been removed/deleted !! The folder structure is still there however no content. I since sent a new photo to the phone this morning and perform the same search and its there as it should be.

So Apple ? *** happened to your amazing IOS that has developed some sort of AI and decided to destroy the attachments ?

So reading through this i think the only way back is through a good known back up ... "if you have one and your itunes didnt back up over the last goody"

Unless it moves and renames every file to some secret location they are definitely gone from the phone.

Apple need to address this fault and work out what the crash/fault is that caves the SMS.db in and eats the files .. 😟

If anyone finds the reason or any form of solution please let me know ...

Shannon

Hi,

This might solve the problem of missing pictures in iMessage.

1) turn OFF iMessage

2) hard reboot

3) turn on iMessage

4) reset network settings

This sequens worked on a iPhone 5s 32GB running iOS 8.2

/Nick

That post got me hoping it was a fix in 8.2!

No luck here I'm afraid.

Hi Ads_N

i tried almost all of the suggestions listed in this thread. But ended up with the sequence I listed as what worked for me.

I Will suggest that you try one or more of the choices in here at some point it might work.

hope that you end up succeeding in getting the pictures back in iMessage

br, Nick

N_Krog -

were you able to get all of your old pictures in iMessage to show up again via your solve or just most recent?

hi

no the old pictures did not reload or appear unfortunately.

br, Nick

N_krog I'm a bit confused - what did your solution fix?

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

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.

This is still happening to me regularly. So **** annoying.

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.