iCloud backup - iMessage not restored

[Sebby]

Hi all, I've just received my replacement 6s Plus to replace a previous 6s Plus that was faulty. Before I sent it off I did a full iCloud backup. It appears to have successfully restored, but no iMessages are appearing.

Has anyone else experienced this?

The backup was taken on 9.0.2 and the new handset is on 9.0.2.

Incidentally, it was fine when I restored my previous iPhone 6 backup to my original 6s Plus.

 

[Liam Steven]

Hi all, I've just received my replacement 6s Plus to replace a previous 6s Plus that was faulty. Before I sent it off I did a full iCloud backup. It appears to have successfully restored, but no iMessages are appearing.

Has anyone else experienced this?

The backup was taken on 9.0.2 and the new handset is on 9.0.2.

Incidentally, it was fine when I restored my previous iPhone 6 backup to my original 6s Plus.

Has it restored text messages?

 

[Sebby]

Nope. I tried restoring the known good backup and that was the same. I just restored the phone to 9.1 with iTunes and now I'm trying a restore again.

I'm happy that it doesn't appear to be a dodgy backup, but still frustrated that this is happening (having never happened before).

 

[Sebby]

Still no different after updating to 9.1. In fact, after the backup had been restored from the iPhone, it got stuck on the boot up screen and I had to reset the phone. Surely not another faulty handset?

 

[bgro]

This is a known issue (at least by users on this site and the Apple forums). Restores seem to be fine when backed up on a 6/+ and restored on a 6S/+ but will not restore iMessages when backed up on an "S/S+" model and restored on the same type of model. I've had this personally happen to me and my wife as well.

 

[Sebby]

Thanks, good to hear it's not just me, but frustrating all the same!

 

[bgro]

Thanks, good to hear it's not just me, but frustrating all the same!

Yeah absolutely agree that it's frustrating. I don't trust iCloud at all now and i have all my mail, contacts, calendar, and photos synced/backed up through iCloud. Have been looking into other options.

 

[Draven451]

Hi everyone - Just like bgro detailed above, I have the same issue. I did a bunch of research online and saw multiple posts on here as well as on the Apple support forums but I haven't seen anyone post any resolutions. Apple currently has my Icloud account in troubleshooting mode so they can look for the issue for about a week but I have not heard back from them.

A couple things you can try are restore to your last Icloud backup created by your IPhone 6 but keep in mind you will lose any data including text messages that were created after that restore date. I did that but lost three weeks worth of text messages and voice message history including any new apps I downloaded (just had to re-download.) While I was disappointed to lose so much information I was glad I was able to recover the majority of my text history.

Here is the only solution I have found that I have not seen posted anywhere that has worked for me to recover my lost text messages. I'm not sure if I can mention other companies software but if you google iphonebackupextractor by Reincubate they have a program that they recently updated which is able to download your Icloud backup for the 6s. You can download your entire backup or select different categories of information to download. The process was very easy and their support team is very quick at replying to questions thru emails. In fact when I initially downloaded their program about 2 weeks ago their software was not able to extract the Icloud backup for the 6s and their support team notified me of this issue and said their software developers were working on an update to address this issue and gave me an option to refund my money or wait a week for the update to roll-out. Within one week their support team emailed me and said the update was available and I downloaded the latest version and it worked great.

They have an option once you have downloaded your sms data to convert it to an html document and save it. This option works really well and the document looks like an actual text message conversation.

On their website they have a blog and also a youtube video which shows steps on how to take the recovered sms data one you have downloaded and how to get it back onto your phone. I have not tried this myself as I'm in a catch 22 where over the past three weeks I have created a bunch of new messages that I will lose if I decide to restore my old sms data backup.

I hope this helps anyone that has lost their messages

 

[Sebby]

Keep us updated with what Apple say.

 

[BeeGood]

Same problem here. I've tried to a lot of different ideas but same result: phone gets stuck on boot screen and I have to force it to shut off. When I power it back on, it resumes update but with missing texts and other missing data.

For anyone who's interested, here is the thread on the Apple Community Forum. Maybe if enough of us keep posting about it Apple will fix this like yesterday, but I'm not even sure it matters anymore (for me). I lost 3 weeks worth of messages/app data having to restore from my old 6+ backup. Once they fix iCloud I'm not even sure I would trust it again.


https://discussions.apple.com/message/29222583?ac_cid=tw123456#29222583

 

[Adam-Jobs]

I have a call with Apple about this tomorrow. Will update everyone. Doubt they can suggest anything that I haven't already tried. I'm using an iPhone 6.

 

[Sebby]

Hi Adam, did you get anywhere?

 

[Acevesx]

just happened to me, so FRUSTRATING! I'm terribly disappointed in the iphone 6s plus and ios 9.1, really poor delivery apple.

 

[Acevesx]

Curious if anyone has found a solution to this? I'm going to have to take my phone in but fear if I exchange I won't be able to restore again.

 

[BeeGood]

Curious if anyone has found a solution to this? I'm going to have to take my phone in but fear if I exchange I won't be able to restore again.

I've seen no resolution either on the Apple Community Forum or here. Your best option is to back up to iTunes before you go. Good luck.

 

[Hookem09]

Looks like the media is now aware of this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/11/18/iphone-6s-data-problems/

 

[bgro]

I've seen no resolution either on the Apple Community Forum or here. Your best option is to back up to iTunes before you go. Good luck.

Does doing an itunes restore solve this issue? I fought messages weren't restoring thru iTunes either?

 

[BeeGood]

Does doing an itunes restore solve this issue? I fought messages weren't restoring thru iTunes either?

Nope iTunes backups work for me. Everything gets perfectly restored. The issue seems to be in iCloud backups made by 6s/6s+.

I've just resorted to doing wifi sync with iTunes. Other than having to keep iTunes running and my PC awake it works. But I still hate iTunes and hope this gets fixed ASAP.

 

[BeeGood]

Looks like the media is now aware of this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/11/18/iphone-6s-data-problems/

Man it's about time. It's been like a month and a half of Apple twiddling it's thumbs about this. Hopefully some negative press will get things going.

It is really kind of pathetic that Apple, a company that is lauded for excellent customer service and support has sat on this for several weeks without even advising people to do iTunes backups before they return their phones. I wonder how many people have lost data unnecessarily.

 

[acctman]

This has been going on since October. It doesn't seem to be a priority for Apple

 

[Speedman100]

I lost my health and Apple Watch activity data from an iCloud restore. But the even stranger thing now is that my Health app won't even add new data anymore since the restore, and my Activity app just shows a screen that says I need to set up Activity on my Apple Watch, which I already did weeks ago. So I can't look into my calorie or exercise history anymore.

 

[jpgr15]

<deleted>

 

[js87]

Got the same issue. Exchanged iPhone 6s Plus last night at the local Apple Store, they watched me do an iCloud backup infront of them and swap phones. Low and behold when I get home all messages and call data missing. Only discovered this was a known issue this morning and somehow missed all these reports. Cannot believe they didn't mention it in store.

Phoned tech support this morning who have put my phone in troubleshooting mode as above but I don't hold out much hope. If the data isn't recovered I will be switching back to iTunes backups, ditching my iCloud account and requesting a refund for what I've paid seeing as it hasn't worked...not that it will dent their pockets. When I questioned them about why they aren't warning people I was told they had never heard of this problem and I was their first report!

For now I have restored to a September backup which was available. This means I have only lost 2 months of messages and application data for the moment.

 

[acctman]

Got the same issue. Exchanged iPhone 6s Plus last night at the local Apple Store, they watched me do an iCloud backup infront of them and swap phones. Low and behold when I get home all messages and call data missing. Only discovered this was a known issue this morning and somehow missed all these reports. Cannot believe they didn't mention it in store.

Phoned tech support this morning who have put my phone in troubleshooting mode as above but I don't hold out much hope. If the data isn't recovered I will be switching back to iTunes backups, ditching my iCloud account and requesting a refund for what I've paid seeing as it hasn't worked...not that it will dent their pockets. When I questioned them about why they aren't warning people I was told they had never heard of this problem and I was their first report!

For now I have restored to a September backup which was available. This means I have only lost 2 months of messages and application data for the moment.

I already request a refunded granted it's only 5$ but really I don't care, I want my money back. I paid for a service that clearly does not work. Not to mention it take forever (hours) for a 30gb iClouds backup to restore when it take a 30mins from an iTunes backup.

 

[JD92]

Same issue here: Messages, Health data and recent call data all gone.

The issue is still present in iOS 9.2 Beta 4. Hoping Beta 5 might land this week with a fix but who knows.

It's very disappointing that this issue has been around for an entire month with no public statement from Apple. Indeed - Genius Bars are still recommending people use iCloud backups when giving out replacement iPhones. This suggests that either the data will magically reappear if/when the bug is fixed in iOS 9.2, or it means that Apple even more dysfunctional than I though.

For what it's worth, this is the second time I've experienced data loss due to iCloud. I got stung by this in iOS 8. Service outages are one thing - but all out data loss is completely unacceptable. iCloud is simply untrustworthy.