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Restore contacts & SMS only?

TL24

TL24

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 20, 2011
1,457
1,361
I recently purchased a brand spanking new iPhone 5 (32gb) and instead of fully restoring everything from my previous 4S back up I only want to restore the contacts and sms only - is that possible?:confused:
 
Applejuiced said:
You can restore the contacts only.
To get all the texts you will need to get it all from restoring from backup.
Sucks that you cant pick and choose in an all or nothing deal.
Click to expand...

How do I only restore the contacts? iTunes will not allow me to specifically select what I want to restore :confused:
 
TL24 said:
How do I only restore the contacts? iTunes will not allow me to specifically select what I want to restore :confused:
Click to expand...

you can use icloud to restore your contact. Just enable the contact feature in icloud setting. Then sign in that icloud account in your new iphone. It's only for contact. Sms can't.
 
TL24 said:
How do I only restore the contacts? iTunes will not allow me to specifically select what I want to restore :confused:
Click to expand...

You can use iBackUpBot, I've tried and test it on iOS 6 on my iPhone 4, so I can't guarantee anything for an iPhone 5 but I would be fairly sure it would work.

First restore your iPhone 5 from backup so it has all your contacts and texts which you want to save on your phone (among the useless extra stuff you don't want). Then back up your phone and open iBackUpBot and locate your most recent backup. Find sms.db & addressbook.db and select then and export them to your desktop (along with the info which it asks, required to restore into a backup).

Then restore your phone to new and do not restore from backup. Once it's back to factory settings, back up your phone (obviously this will backup practically nothing as you have just restored it). Then open iBackUpBot and locate the clean backup you just created. Then choose "import" and select the sms.db and the addressbook.db and import them into your backup. Once this is done, go to iTunes and choose restore from backup and select this backup. This should keep everything clean, and just put the sms/addressbook back onto your phone, aka your messages and contacts :)
 
Andy Ftw said:
You can use iBackUpBot, I've tried and test it on iOS 6 on my iPhone 4, so I can't guarantee anything for an iPhone 5 but I would be fairly sure it would work.

First restore your iPhone 5 from backup so it has all your contacts and texts which you want to save on your phone (among the useless extra stuff you don't want). Then back up your phone and open iBackUpBot and locate your most recent backup. Find sms.db & addressbook.db and select then and export them to your desktop (along with the info which it asks, required to restore into a backup).

Then restore your phone to new and do not restore from backup. Once it's back to factory settings, back up your phone (obviously this will backup practically nothing as you have just restored it). Then open iBackUpBot and locate the clean backup you just created. Then choose "import" and select the sms.db and the addressbook.db and import them into your backup. Once this is done, go to iTunes and choose restore from backup and select this backup. This should keep everything clean, and just put the sms/addressbook back onto your phone, aka your messages and contacts :)
Click to expand...

Thanks bud! I'll try that right now!
 
help

Andy Ftw said:
You can use iBackUpBot, I've tried and test it on iOS 6 on my iPhone 4, so I can't guarantee anything for an iPhone 5 but I would be fairly sure it would work.

First restore your iPhone 5 from backup so it has all your contacts and texts which you want to save on your phone (among the useless extra stuff you don't want). Then back up your phone and open iBackUpBot and locate your most recent backup. Find sms.db & addressbook.db and select then and export them to your desktop (along with the info which it asks, required to restore into a backup).

Then restore your phone to new and do not restore from backup. Once it's back to factory settings, back up your phone (obviously this will backup practically nothing as you have just restored it). Then open iBackUpBot and locate the clean backup you just created. Then choose "import" and select the sms.db and the addressbook.db and import them into your backup. Once this is done, go to iTunes and choose restore from backup and select this backup. This should keep everything clean, and just put the sms/addressbook back onto your phone, aka your messages and contacts :)
Click to expand...

Hi! this is exactly what I need to do, but I am not very savy with this stuff. Would you be willing to walk me through this? I have an iPhone 4s that I need to wipe fresh but would like to restore only my contacts and text messages. I have ibotbackup, but not sure how to do this! Your help would be appreciated, thanks for your time.
Kelsey
 
just restore everything and then unsync everything you don't want.
 
Mr Kram said:
just restore everything and then unsync everything you don't want.
Click to expand...

The problem with this is that you can't selectively restore certain data, like settings, SMS's, and app data. The iBackupBot method is so much better for selective restoration purposes.
 
Bluesky2011 said:
you can use icloud to restore your contact. Just enable the contact feature in icloud setting. Then sign in that icloud account in your new iphone. It's only for contact. Sms can't.
Click to expand...

That's not totally true. You can do an iCloud backup which does include SMS. If you are going to go thorough some big process of restoring the phone, backing it up again etc to use some third party why not just restore it, turn on iCloud and make sure contacts are syncing. Ditch all your apps, your camera roll, hit all the reset settings stuff and so in until nothing is left but contacts, messages and then run an iCloud backup. Do a DFU to really wipe it clean and restore from iCloud.

Probably about as much work.
 
help

viperGTS said:
The problem with this is that you can't selectively restore certain data, like settings, SMS's, and app data. The iBackupBot method is so much better for selective restoration purposes.
Click to expand...

I understand I was just hoping someone could walk me through the process step by step.:(
 
help

charlituna said:
That's not totally true. You can do an iCloud backup which does include SMS. If you are going to go thorough some big process of restoring the phone, backing it up again etc to use some third party why not just restore it, turn on iCloud and make sure contacts are syncing. Ditch all your apps, your camera roll, hit all the reset settings stuff and so in until nothing is left but contacts, messages and then run an iCloud backup. Do a DFU to really wipe it clean and restore from iCloud.

Probably about as much work.
Click to expand...

How do I do this? thanks
 
I recently got a iphone 5 and from the excitement of seeing Obama in cape town, took pictures of his speech and even recorded my friends shaking his hand and have brief conversations. Now when i connected the new phone into my mac, itunes requested a restore from old backup. So agreed, not knowing that all the new photos / movies of the US president would be deleted!!!

Can i receive them or not. and why doesn't Apple provide such information to users for new restorations?
Please help!
 
Before a sync or restore, I believe that iTunes will create a backup of your phone's contents (unless you manually cancel this backup). The backup will contain the photos and messages that were on the phone.
 
It is a pity that if you choose to restore from iTunes, you will recover the entire data of your iTunes, however, what to do if you want to recover contacts or messages only, this is also a problem that haunts me recently.
 
Actually, when we delete a contact from iPhone, the contact doesn't get deleted really, it still stay somewhere on our phone but is difficultly detected by our eyes. It's because the deleted data is technically marked for deletion by the operating system and hidden so that they become invisible to us.
Do you know how to restore contacts on iphone? As is known to us, when we have no previous backup to restore, the only way to retrieve deleted contacts on iPhone is by using a third-party tool.
 
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recover text messages without iPhone

Not careful to deleted SMS messages from iPhone,or after jailbreak iPhone/Update iPhone to more high iOS system,and cause their Text messages lost,Lost SMS after factory reset on the iPhone.However,how to recover deleted text messages from iPhone?Are there any way to restore deleted SMS Message from iPhone?

You can retrieve deleted text messages on iPhone without using the device with FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery, if you have made a backup before.

Here is the way you can follow to restore text messages iPhone

1. Connect the iPhone to the computer with a USB cable.
2. Open iTunes.
3. If you have a new or erased iPhone, iTunes will prompt you to restore from backup.
4. Otherwise, Control-click on your iPhone under DEVICES in the left menu.
5. Select Restore From Backup...
6. Choose the backup you wish to sync and click the Restore button.
 
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