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iPhone Can I restore just sms?

lyceumHQ

lyceumHQ

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 4, 2010
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Is it possible to restore just SMS messages in iOS 11?

Got the 8 last week.

This morning the screen became completely unresponsive. The lock button worked and I could lock and unlock the phone but that was it.

I thought it was about time I did a restore and set up as new. Since basically always restored from backup whenever I’ve upgraded my phone.

But I have a text message I can’t lose. Everything else important is backed up but I can’t lose that SMS.

So, is it possible to now just restore SMS messages?

Thanks
 
Hi,

There are third-party utilities that claim to be able to do selective restores of part of a backup, but I've got no experience with them myself. Certainly out-of-the-box non-jailbroken iOS does not permit you to selectively restore parts of an iTunes or iCloud backup - it's all or nothing.

If you absolutely need to do a clean re-install, the best thing I can suggest here is either take screenshots of the SMS message thread and save them to either your iCloud Photo Library or a Shared Photo Stream to preserve them; or forward it on to yourself at another number then forward it back to your original device once it's up and running again. I realise that neither of these solutions is anywhere near ideal, but it's the best I can think of right now at any rate.
 
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drysdalk said:
Hi,

There are third-party utilities that claim to be able to do selective restores of part of a backup, but I've got no experience with them myself. Certainly out-of-the-box non-jailbroken iOS does not permit you to selectively restore parts of an iTunes or iCloud backup - it's all or nothing.

If you absolutely need to do a clean re-install, the best thing I can suggest here is either take screenshots of the SMS message thread and save them to either your iCloud Photo Library or a Shared Photo Stream to preserve them; or forward it on to yourself at another number then forward it back to your original device once it's up and running again. I realise that neither of these solutions is anywhere near ideal, but it's the best I can think of right now at any rate.
Click to expand...

Thanks it’s not the message contents that’s important it’s the message itself. It was the last message my mum sent me before she died. So it’s important for me to have it sat in my inbox saying ‘from mum’.
 
lyceumHQ said:
Is it possible to restore just SMS messages in iOS 11?

Got the 8 last week.

This morning the screen became completely unresponsive. The lock button worked and I could lock and unlock the phone but that was it.

I thought it was about time I did a restore and set up as new. Since basically always restored from backup whenever I’ve upgraded my phone.

But I have a text message I can’t lose. Everything else important is backed up but I can’t lose that SMS.

So, is it possible to now just restore SMS messages?

Thanks
Click to expand...

i used anytrans to just transfer sms from old phone to new one... but you will need a backup of previous phone or have the old phone handy
 
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If you have an iTunes backup you can use an app to retrieve the data from the backup.
I know of IExplorer which has an app for Mac and Windows with a free trial but I think there are other apps too.
You may even be able to retrieve the data directly from the iPhone by plugging it in to your computer and using the app, but not sure.
 
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Thanks! Will give those two a go. I have the phone so can’t back it up with iTunes.
 
Tried iBackup bot, won't restore, just give various different error messages.
 
I would suggest, regardless of what you do here, you take a screenshot of it.

Who knows what may happen in the future. You may delete it by accident, or turn on "delete messages over 1 year old" or when iCloud sync comes it might get zapped with that setting set somewhere else.
 
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Fantasigraphic said:
New version times out/disconnects iTunes from phone. Use a previous/older version and it works fine
Click to expand...

Thanks. I’ll try one of the older versions. I just got error -1 which says turn find my iPhone off but they didn’t work.
 
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