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Transfer old messages to a phone that's setup as new phone

2

2mw2

macrumors member
Original poster
Hi

Looking to reflash my phone and set it up as new phone on the 8.1 Beta 2. Anyone know of any freeware tools to transfer just the iMessages from an old backup to the fresh ?

Thanks
 
I have never came across any tools that can really provide that functionality, unfortunately.

There are lots of apps that can copy the messages from an iPhone and make them readable on a PC but non I have seen that can transfer them back onto an iPhone.
 
2mw2 said:
Hi

Looking to reflash my phone and set it up as new phone on the 8.1 Beta 2. Anyone know of any freeware tools to transfer just the iMessages from an old backup to the fresh ?

Thanks
Click to expand...

You're out of luck. What I did is buy an app called SMS Export Plus and exported my messages as excel files and started as new.
 
Last edited:
I remember looking into this a while back. I think ifunbox can be used for whatsapp messages. (not sure if it handled the whatsapp media correctly tho)
And it was free.

For iMessage tho I am not sure if there is a free app to help with this.

I think whatsapp/imessage for myself would be the 2 apps I would like to try this with.
 
Use this to backup and restore old text/iMessages from iPhone 5 to new iPhone 6 (setup as new) and worked perfectly on 2 of my new phones. If you have more than 1 phone make sure you buy the 'family' edition since they count 'each' phone iPhone 5 (from device) and iPhone 6 (to device). I learned the hard way and had to upgrade license to restore 2 iPhone 6s.

However, it is not free but IMHO definitely worth the money and didn't have the hassle.

http://www.backuptrans.com/iphone-sms-mms-imessage-transfer.html
 
When I got my iPhone 6+ I initially restored from my iPhone 5s backup, but had some issues, so restored as a new phone and set it up from scratch.

I was expecting to lose my WhatsApp chat history, but after signing in, it was all there.🙂 Before doing the restore-as-new I researched the WhatsApp message transfer, and found that the WhatsApp site has some info on exporting and importing, which I was expecting to have to do, but didn't need to.

For SMS and iMessages, I saved all my messages, 2008-2014, as a PDF using Phoneview, and I keep that PDF on the phone 6+. So in the rare case I need some info from an old message it is there.
 
Thanks to ominx and clearsky1969. I think i have managed to achieve what I wanted to do i.e. remove any junk from the years or restores and backups. Everything is so far so good
 
Thanks 2mw2 and ominx for help and also making me think of doing this again.

I just reflashed my phone also and started off as new phone and copied back iMessage and whatsapp data only.

I of course made a backup first and then extracted relevant iMessage and whatsapp data before i cleared my phone.

for whatsapp i basically followed this guide:
http://wookstar.com/install-whatsapp-ipad-ipod-keep-chat-history/

And for iMessage followed this one:
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/03/06/how-to-back-up-restore-sms-messages/

Oh and the apps are free so no need to pay anything haha

So now i have a nice fresh phone and it does seem faster 🙂
 
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