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iMessages Backup and Restore

C

captainnima

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Can someone share how I can backup and restore just iMessages content on my Mac? I have time machine but how do I just get the iMessages?

nima zahadat
 
Hi,

what is your OS ?

In Mavericks, the messages are here :

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages/Archive

You can select the line above, then right-click / Reveal in Finder.
 
iMessages Backup and Restore

Thank you. My OS is Mountain Lion. I tired the path you sent but it doesn't work.
 
On Mountain Lion :

~/Library/Messages/Archive

Right click the line above / Services / Reveal in Finder.
 
This is great! Thank you. Another question: once I have Yosemite installed, where do I copy these things to?

thanks,
nima zahadat
 
captainnima said:
This is great! Thank you. Another question: once I have Yosemite installed, where do I copy these things to?

thanks,
nima zahadat
Click to expand...

Unless you are doing a clean install, the messages should stay as they were in Mountain Lion, you won't lose any data.
 
iMessages Backup and Restore

Thanks. I am doing a clean install. Any idea where the messages go? And do I just copy the folders to the new location?
 
iMessages restore

OK. I installed Yosemite clean and moved the archived messages from ~/Library/Messages to the same location. They do not show up in the iChat. Any suggestions?

zahadat nima
 
iMessages restore

Thanks. I went there and all the messages I copied to the ~/Library/Messages/Archive show up there already but nothing comes up in the actual application. Any suggestions?
 
I think that if you want to see the current messages, you need to use these files :

~/Library/Messages/chat.db

(same path on Mountain Lion (ML) and Mavericks).

I have not tested myself, but likely if you copy these files (possibly 3 files : chat.db, chat.db-xxx, chat.db-yyy) from ML to Yosemite your messages will show up in Messages.

Backup the current files (copy them to the desktop for example) on Yosemite before replacing them with the ones from ML.
 
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