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recovering and saving important voicemails, is there a way?

B

bluelondon

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
204
0
yesterday i got a voicemail where my 3 year old nephew left me a message from australia, and i think i listened to it around 50 times through out the day. then last night my 3g iphone just shut down and never got past the apple logo (second time this week). so now i am restoring it from an old back from a week ago, so my question is is there any way i can retrieve yesterday's voicemails? or have i lost it for ever?

thanks for any help
 
VoiceMails are not stored on the phone. VoiceMails are stored at your provider, otherwise it would be an Answering Machine.

SMS is stored locally.

TEG
 
ok i did a restore from a 2 week old restore point and to my surprise my voicemails from yesterday are now on my phone too so happy days!

does anyone know any way of saving voicemails to the computer aside from putting the phone on loud speaker and saving the letting the voicemail play through a mic?
 
TEG said:
VoiceMails are not stored on the phone. VoiceMails are stored at your provider, otherwise it would be an Answering Machine.

SMS is stored locally.

TEG
Click to expand...

With regular voicemail this is true. However, with visual voicemail this is incorrect. With visual voicemail, the message is downloaded to the phone and once it is played on the iPhone it is removed from AT&T's voicemail system.

If you have not listened to the message by going to the voicemail button in the phone app and playing the message (which the OP says he has) then the message is still retrievable by calling voicemail.

This is the case with AT&T, I just tested this to verify my understanding is correct. YMMV
 
bluelondon said:
ok i did a restore from a 2 week old restore point and to my surprise my voicemails from yesterday are now on my phone too so happy days!

does anyone know any way of saving voicemails to the computer aside from putting the phone on loud speaker and saving the letting the voicemail play through a mic?
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like a restore does not get rid of personal data (at least some personal data like voicemails). That doesn't necessarily surprise me but is nice to know.

As to your question, I am unaware of a way to say forward a voicemail by email, but that would be cool, or any other way to get the recording. I know my office phone will do this. Maybe this is something that should be a suggested addition to the iPhone.
 
I didn't realize that visual voicemails were downloaded to the iPhone. The ability to email a voicemail message to someone would be an awesome feature.
 
StoneColdSober said:
With regular voicemail this is true. However, with visual voicemail this is incorrect. With visual voicemail, the message is downloaded to the phone and once it is played on the iPhone it is removed from AT&T's voicemail system.

If you have not listened to the message by going to the voicemail button in the phone app and playing the message (which the OP says he has) then the message is still retrievable by calling voicemail.

This is the case with AT&T, I just tested this to verify my understanding is correct. YMMV
Click to expand...

The Voicemail may be downloaded, but not removed, as I will often switch phones or use a land line to check my voicemail and the old voice mails are still there.

TEG
 
TEG said:
The Voicemail may be downloaded, but not removed, as I will often switch phones or use a land line to check my voicemail and the old voice mails are still there.

TEG
Click to expand...

As I said, I tested it (twice). If I don't listen to the message on the iPhone (using the visual voicemail button in the phone app), the message stayed on the AT&T voicemail system. I could call my voicemail and listen to the message. However, once I listened to the message (using the visual voicemail button in the phone app), I then called voicemail, and I had no messages even though the messages still showed up in my visual voicemail.

ETA
Trajectory said:
I didn't realize that visual voicemails were downloaded to the iPhone. The ability to email a voicemail message to someone would be an awesome feature.
Click to expand...

This would be a very handy feature and I am not sure why they have not included it. I have my office phone (a mitel system) set up to forward all of my voicemails to my email. I can listen to them, archive them, forward them or all of the above anytime I want. It is great.
 
StoneColdSober said:
As I said, I tested it (twice). If I don't listen to the message on the iPhone (using the visual voicemail button in the phone app), the message stayed on the AT&T voicemail system. I could call my voicemail and listen to the message. However, once I listened to the message (using the visual voicemail button in the phone app), I then called voicemail, and I had no messages even though the messages still showed up in my visual voicemail.
Click to expand...

And I'm telling you that I can listen to my voicemail in VV and later check voice mail the "normal" way and they are still there. It may be related to the particular VoiceMail system my region has, as I recall something about there being different VoiceMail servers that behave differently.

TEG
 
TEG said:
And I'm telling you that I can listen to my voicemail in VV and later check voice mail the "normal" way and they are still there. It may be related to the particular VoiceMail system my region has, as I recall something about there being different VoiceMail servers that behave differently.

TEG
Click to expand...

It's all good. Not trying to argue. Just telling you I tried it twice within the last 30 minutes and I reported my results. I am not saying I doubt you, just odd that AT&T would have their voicemail servers setup differently for different regions for this feature. As I said at the end of my first post on this thread, YMMV.
 
ok since there is no way of saving the voicemail on my computer or forwarding it to my email, will my voicemails stay on my phone for ever? or will they be deleted by a certain time?

thanks for all the info guys
 
I know with the regular voicemail system there is a default length of time a message will be stored. IIRC (I haven't used it in a long time) you could override this with specific messages and tell the system to still keep the message.

My guess (and on this one it is strictly a guess) would be that if the voicemail server your region is using does what TEG says his does then after the default time has expired it would erase it from the voicemail server but this shouldn't remove it from your phone. And, as long as the message is not deleted from the phone itself, it shouldn't just be automatically deleted. However, the message could still get deleted with a restore though, I think you got you got lucky today.
 
StoneColdSober said:
It's all good. Not trying to argue. Just telling you I tried it twice within the last 30 minutes and I reported my results. I am not saying I doubt you, just odd that AT&T would have their voicemail servers setup differently for different regions for this feature. As I said at the end of my first post on this thread, YMMV.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to argue either, but the other poster "aristobrat" just kicked up my dander a bit.

I think my situation is as you said about the messages disappearing after 30 days (the default on my server), I've never waited that long to recover a message. I also think it may have to do with my voicemail being on an old AT&T Wireless server instead of a Cingular or at&t mobility server.

TEG
 
TEG said:
I'm trying to argue either, but the other poster "aristobrat" just kicked up my dander a bit.
Click to expand...
Sorry about that TEG. It's cool to be wrong when answering a post, but when you added the snarky "otherwise it would be an Answering Machine" comment, you kicked up some dander yourself there. :eek:

Didn't mean to insult you. I just didn't realize that it wasn't obvious to some people that since the iPhone lets you listen to your visual voicemails when you have NO SIGNAL (or are in flight mode), or with how it does the seamless FF/REW/skip to a specific point in a voicemail and instantly start playing, that the voicemails had to be stored locally on the iPhone itself. My apologies. :eek:

StoneColdSober said:
I know with the regular voicemail system there is a default length of time a message will be stored.
Click to expand...
FWIW, I'm in VA and have a Visual Voice mail from 7/12 that is still available on my iPhone and also if I call in to voicemail from another phone. So I guess in my area, it holds them for at least 40 days.
 
Okay, I must issue mea culpa/clarification that others may find useful. When I did my test earlier I was calling from my iPhone. When I did this after listening to the messages on my iPhone (using VV) I got the main menu with no option to listen to my messages. There was no indication that I had any messages stored.

However, I just tested it again calling from a landline and low and behold my messages were there. Then I tried calling voicemail from my iPhone and this time it gave me the option to listen to my messages. Weird.

But as I have said many times before in my life, I was wrong, in the future I will be wrong again. And not to toot my own horn, but I can be big enough to admit it when I am.
 
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