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iPhone extracting sms messages from iphone backup

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tomthefear

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2012
4
0
I'm trying to extract sms messages from my iphone to an easy to read format on my mac (creating an "our textual relationship" thing for my gf)

I've had a look around a few places online, and it seems that this is possible.

Up to now I've used "Iphone backup extractor" to extract all of the ios files, have located sms.db, and I'm trying to use "sqlite database browser" to find the messages, but when I try to open the .db file it just looks blank.

Cant find a solution to this anywhere, and would really appreciate the help.

Thanks

Using ios 5.1.1 & osx 10.7.3
 
M

MastahRiz

macrumors 6502
Aug 7, 2010
483
0
Ah that might make things a bit harder.

I think for non-jb devices the method you mentioned is the only way to go. Find the database in the backup and then extract with those sql tools.

Do you know someone with a jb idevice? You could copy your db to their phone and have them use the app for you. (Be sure to backup their db first!)

Or you could try jb-ing just to do the sms extraction and then restore your phone to get rid of the jb and then restore it from a backup to bring it back to how it is now.

I know those options all kind of suck, but not sure what else you can do. Hopefully others can chime in with something more helpful!

Good luck!
 
T

tomthefear

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2012
4
0
TSX said:
Just restore from that backup.
Click to expand...

I think you're misunderstanding me. I have all the messages on my phone, but i want to get them onto my mac into an easy to read format? like a text file.

(I know i could copy and paste the messages to an email, but I want about 6 months worth of messages, so this wouldn't really be an option)

Extracting from my backup seemed like the most straight forward route.
 
K

kingdLo

macrumors 6502
Mar 20, 2009
273
2
You can use ibackup bot to view and extract the db to plain text format, db, or excel database.

I will say you won't see the SMS as normal, instead just broken down into plain text form. Some messages aren't in order, and in some the text isnt complete. Just something's I noticed earlier today looking at the SMS db
 
jpetticrew

jpetticrew

macrumors 6502a
May 13, 2009
782
2
Texas
PhoneView will extract your text conversations as a PDF and download all of the MMS files for you as well.
 
B

Beti

macrumors newbie
Aug 3, 2010
2
0
andrewkotler said:
I think the decipher text message program is probably what you want. Looks like you can save or export your sms messages to your computer with the software. Also says they have a free trial on their site.
http://www.deciphertools.com
Click to expand...

I second Decipher Tools. I just used it to extract all my text messages from a backup. It'll default to saving them as an html page that looks like the iPhone text messages (little speech bubbles) but you can copy and paste that into a text document. Quick, easy and only $20.
 
R

Resist

macrumors 68040
Jan 15, 2008
3,003
93
I'm interested in doing this also, but noticed that some of the replies are for applications that only work on a PC. I believe the original poster asked about saving the texts on a Mac. And that's what I want as well.

In my case I want to remove some old texts from my iPhone 5, but save them to my Macbook Pro.
 
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