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fisherking

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jul 16, 2010
11,306
5,636
ny somewhere
i've got a (long) text thread on my mac (not on the iphone) that i'd like to keep... but not in the messages app. any suggestions on how to copy the whole thread, and save in a document? can't seem to figure it out
 
Select File>Print and it will prepare to print all of the active messages. You can then print to a pdf file which may be the closest you can get to an actual text file. If some of the thread is older than what is showing the current window, you may have to scroll back in the timeline to get all of it in the current window.
 
140 page document! got it, thanks for the idea ?

EDIT: sadly, none of the images copied over (the pdf has black boxes), and they were important. and i deleted the thread... so it goes. :oops:
 
140 page document! got it, thanks for the idea ?

EDIT: sadly, none of the images copied over (the pdf has black boxes), and they were important. and i deleted the thread... so it goes. :oops:
...Just in case... Have you tried the produced PDF in a few different pdf viewers? (It's rare, but rendering can vary).
 
...Just in case... Have you tried the produced PDF in a few different pdf viewers? (It's rare, but rendering can vary).
no luck, it's 140 pages of text and black boxes (i checked in adobe reader, 2 readers from the app store, and affinity photo). it's a loss, but just life. thanks again for trying to help.

Screen Shot 2022-04-13 at 2.56.01 PM.png
 
Last edited:
Very sorry about that, I rarely get text messages with photos so I have never seen that happen.
 
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