Recently I upgraded phones from 5s to the 6 Plus. All of my text messages within the past year are missing. How can I retrieve them?
iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 9.2
Text messages should be a part of the backup of your old device. When you upgraded to the iPhone 6 Plus, did you restore the backup of the iPhone 5s to the 6 Plus? It should have brought over the messages. Was this an iTunes or iCloud backup?
This was an iCloud backup. All of my messages before January 2015 transported over.
If you go to settings>Messages, what is set there under Message History? Keep Messages for ?? So you got messages from before January 2015, but nothing after January 2015, correct? Was this the latest iCloud backup you had? Did you check the date?
Messages are kept forever and yes nothing after Jan 2015. Not sure how to check the exact date but iCloud back is very recent.
Erase the device again. Then when restoring from the iCloud backup, check the date. Also, did you happen to use a different Apple ID for iCloud backups? For example, it's possible that either A) your device wasn't backed up to iCloud since January 2015 or B) the Apple ID you used to restore iCloud backup wasn't used for iCloud backups since then, and you've been using a different Apple ID or C) Since iCloud saves your three most recent backups, somehow you have a backup that really is that old, and selected that one instead of your most recent one.
This worked!! Thanks so much. My sign in names did not match ( I have one with .icloud and .me). Good to go!
Glad to see you got it sorted out.
Missing text messages
