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Is there any way to transfer Voicemail from 4 to 5?

trlyka

trlyka

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 26, 2011
539
7
I'm selling my iPhone 4 tomorrow. The only thing that won't transfer from my 4 to 5 is the voicemail. I only have new VM messages on my iPhone 5. My 4 has my older messages that I want to save. AT&T said there is no way to transfer them. The rep suggested that I use the voice memo to save them. So I'd have to play each one from my 4 and hope it records clearly to my 5 :confused:

Is there no other way?
 
jkeekij said:
If I am not mistaken the iPhone backup will contain the voicemails.
Click to expand...

With AT&T, you lose saved voicemails. I'm sure of this because I'm looking at my iPhone 4 which has about 25 saved voicemails and my iPhone 5, restored from the iPhone 4's backup during setup, had none.

You retain Voice Memos, but the voicemails are gone. You also have to login to your voicemail account again after upgrading in order to get any voicemails. I forgot to login and wondered why I didn't get any voicemails for 2 days. :eek:

You can try recording them by playing them into Voice Memos as suggested. Make sure you're in a completely quiet room and then test one for the optimum volume level. It's a PITA but it should work well enough to preserve them. Please post your results. I'm going to try it myself because I'm passing the iPhone 4 on to my son in a few weeks and I want to try to save some of those old voicemails. Thanks for the idea. :)
 
I have Verizon, when I powered on my iP5, I did NOT restore from itunes, and just set up as a new phone. All my voicemails, even going back to April, just appeared. Maybe its a network thing.
 
ELMNT925 said:
I have Verizon, when I powered on my iP5, I did NOT restore from itunes, and just set up as a new phone. All my voicemails, even going back to April, just appeared. Maybe its a network thing.
Click to expand...

Agreed. It could be another of the differences between AT&T and Verizon.
 
I just did the voice memo thing for my messages. Not ideal, but seemed to work ok. The only problem is the time/date stamp. There is no way of knowing when the messages were left so I just stated the date of each one at the end of the recording.
 
I'm on AT&T. I did a restore from iCloud and all my existing voice mails that were in the visual voice mail phone app are still there. I had about 20 dating back to early September.

Nabby
 
i'm on AT&T and all my old voicemails came over with my iPhone 4 backup restore when i set up the new iPhone.
 
lelisa13p said:
With AT&T, you lose saved voicemails. I'm sure of this because I'm looking at my iPhone 4 which has about 25 saved voicemails and my iPhone 5, restored from the iPhone 4's backup during setup, had none.

You retain Voice Memos, but the voicemails are gone. You also have to login to your voicemail account again after upgrading in order to get any voicemails. I forgot to login and wondered why I didn't get any voicemails for 2 days. :eek:

You can try recording them by playing them into Voice Memos as suggested. Make sure you're in a completely quiet room and then test one for the optimum volume level. It's a PITA but it should work well enough to preserve them. Please post your results. I'm going to try it myself because I'm passing the iPhone 4 on to my son in a few weeks and I want to try to save some of those old voicemails. Thanks for the idea. :)
Click to expand...

I don't understand why people make statements and claim them to be absolute fact, when it's completely off base.

All of my voicemails from my 4S transferred to the 5, but I'm pretty sure it's a network thing and has nothing to do with the backup. As you stated, you have to reenter your voicemail password....and that's the point when the voicemails appear.

There is no need to record the voicemails to a memo or any other nonsense. I'm on ATT.
 
aztooh said:
...All of my voicemails from my 4S transferred to the 5...
Click to expand...

As did mine- not just from the 4s to the 5, but from the 3g to the 4, and from the 4 to the 4s. And I'm also on AT&T.

Because I wasn't sure this would happen when I made the switch from the 4 to the 4s, I used a program to convert critical voice mail messages and save them on my iMac.
 
aztooh said:
I don't understand why people make statements and claim them to be absolute fact, when it's completely off base.

All of my voicemails from my 4S transferred to the 5, but I'm pretty sure it's a network thing and has nothing to do with the backup. As you stated, you have to reenter your voicemail password....and that's the point when the voicemails appear.

There is no need to record the voicemails to a memo or any other nonsense. I'm on ATT.
Click to expand...

Excuse me if I seemed absolute. That was my experience going from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5, using only iTunes as backup, with nothing in iCloud (no backups, visual VM or anything else.) I stand corrected by other posts and will, in all future responses, always restrict myself to qualifying replies as being entirely personal in nature.

Perhaps if I'd signed into my VM account between activating the new iPhone 5 and performing the restoration, maybe my previous VMs would've transitioned. There's no way to know now. I still have them saved on the iPhone 4 but since it doesn't have phone service anymore perhaps someone else would like to tell me how to get them transferred over since I'm in the same boat as the OP.

Seriously. No kidding. If there's a way not to have to go thru what I suggested as remedy earlier, I'd certainly like to hear about it. I'm looking into iExplorer 3.

pnoyblazed said:
are those jb apps? I too, lost all my voicemails coming from the 4S to the 5.. this is on AT&T. Good thing I didn't have any important voicemails or else I'd be PO
Click to expand...

I'm sorry you're in the same boat; do you not use iCloud for backing up, either?
 
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