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Looking to save sentimental iMessage conversations on my MacBook (not iPhone) by converting them to a PDF or another format.

M

mikeyiphone

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 10, 2009
168
10
Looking to save a couple of sentimental iMessage conversations on my MacBook (not iPhone) by converting them to a PDF or another format.

The iMessage app takes a while to scroll thought some of the messages (some are as long as 6 years). When I go back and try to try the print and select save as PDF feature iMessage crashes.

All the apps I have seen mentioned in other forums are for the iPhone not the Mac.

Any apps or alternative solutions ?

Thank you in advance
 
mikeyiphone said:
Looking to save a couple of sentimental iMessage conversations on my MacBook (not iPhone) by converting them to a PDF or another format.

The iMessage app takes a while to scroll thought some of the messages (some are as long as 6 years). When I go back and try to try the print and select save as PDF feature iMessage crashes.

All the apps I have seen mentioned in other forums are for the iPhone not the Mac.

Any apps or alternative solutions ?

Thank you in advance
Click to expand...
I just tried that on my iMac and works no problem, latest version of Big Sur ... what OS are you running?
 
I haven’t tried to print or otherwise archive messages beyond automatic iCloud syncing. Nonetheless, it’s probably best to have the entire conversation cached (i.e., scroll->load->… until all messages have appeared) before trying to Print/Save.

Additionally...

How many pages is the conversation? If there are a lot (dozens or more) that could be a problem. If so, there might be a somewhat tedious workaround.

1) Open the Print dialog.
2) In the print options, change from Pages: All to Pages: From: 1 to: 20
— I used 20 pages as an example. You can go bigger, and if it crashes, try a smaller amount.
— If it works, then do another Print with pages 21-40 (for example)
3) Save As PDF
4) Combine

Combine PDFs in Preview on Mac

In Preview on your Mac, add some or all pages from one PDF to another PDF.
support.apple.com
 
mikeyiphone said:
Looking to save a couple of sentimental iMessage conversations on my MacBook (not iPhone) by converting them to a PDF or another format.

The iMessage app takes a while to scroll thought some of the messages (some are as long as 6 years). When I go back and try to try the print and select save as PDF feature iMessage crashes.

All the apps I have seen mentioned in other forums are for the iPhone not the Mac.

Any apps or alternative solutions ?

Thank you in advance
Click to expand...
I just did this with messages from today back to 6.5 years ago, with a lot of photos in there, 428 pages in the PDF and it saved fine. This was on an M1 Mac mini, 16GB.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: MacCheetah3
darkpaw said:
I just did this with messages from today back to 6.5 years ago, with a lot of photos in there, 428 pages in the PDF and it saved fine. This was on an M1 Mac mini, 16GB.
Click to expand...
I was successful when I didn’t go all the way back to the beginning. For whatever reason any time I got to the start of the conversation iMessage would crash.

The other issue it takes forever to scroll all the way back.

I tried restarting and powering down my Mac. Same issue.
 
mikeyiphone said:
The other issue it takes forever to scroll all the way back.

I tried restarting and powering down my Mac. Same issue.
Click to expand...
It’s by design. Loading only a few days or so of messages at a time allows that portion to appear more quickly. The downside, as you’ve noticed, is the entire conversation loads in these portions. In contrast, if everything needed to be loaded at once, you would probably be staring at a blank Messages window for 5+ minutes. Basically, it’s a fairly responsive experience if you don’t need to look back farther than a week.
 
I am trying to do the same thing, but my problem is opening the print screen so I can try and save only a certain number of pages causes messages to crash. I am running Mac OS Ventura 13.0.1 on an M1 Mac Studio Max with 64 GB RAM.
 
MoonLover said:
I am trying to do the same thing, but my problem is opening the print screen so I can try and save only a certain number of pages causes messages to crash. I am running Mac OS Ventura 13.0.1 on an M1 Mac Studio Max with 64 GB RAM.
Click to expand...
Here is a crash report if loading more than 101 pages if it helps
 

Attachments

  • Messages crash report .txt
    47.6 KB · Views: 169
I used OSX Messages Exporter a while ago, it takes a while to build it's database, but will work in the future if you just are trying to add new messages to the database, even if older ones are deleted. Make sure if you have a really long history, to slice them up in separate months when using pdf output, 7 years of daily messages in a single pdf gets my MBP confused. This also backs up all attachments per contact.
 
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