Here is our scenario: my daughter is attempting emigrate from an outdated iPhone 7 to a (much less outdated) iPhone 12. All the migration went easily, apart from one giant-sized drawback: about half of your message historical past is lacking. on the brand new cellphone. After additional investigation, now we have decided the next:
- iCloud message syncing is turned on on the older cellphone. Nevertheless, on that cellphone messages take up 5.6 GB of storage and on iCloud messages solely take up 2.8 GB of storage.
- In your Macbook Air (which can also be signed in to the identical iCloud account), messages take up 2.8 GB of storage (similar as iCloud); and most of the messages you possibly can see and browse in your outdated cellphone do not seem in your Macbook Air. These lacking messages look like randomly scattered all through your message historical past (or at the very least we’ve not been capable of finding any sample of which of them are lacking) and (so far as we all know) are the identical messages that are not displaying up. on the iPhone 12.
All of this appears to strongly counsel that the issue is that messages are usually not importing from the outdated cellphone to iCloud. The obvious factor to strive subsequent could be to show off iCloud Message Sync on the iPhone 7 after which flip it again on to see if that forces a resync. Nevertheless, once we strive to do this, the message “Deactivate and obtain?” quick, and we’re very cautious of happening that route, as a result of (stunning twist) we have been in the very same scenario earlier than, with a special (even older) cellphone, and once we hit the “Deactivate and obtain?” button All messages that have been saved domestically however not backed as much as iCloud have been completely deleted from the cellphone and couldn’t be recovered..
(In parentheses: I do not know if that is what “Deactivate and obtain” means. supposed do, however we have additionally encountered different folks on-line who’ve had the identical expertise, together with some who’ve explicitly warned customers to not belief Apple Retailer “Genius” staff, lots of whom will faucet that button with out understanding which has precisely the alternative. impact of what’s supposed.)
Simply to finish the story, we tried organising the iPhone 12 in three other ways:
- From an iCloud backup: This clearly did not work, because the iCloud backup is incomplete.
- From an area backup on a pc. She backs up her cellphone recurrently, however apparently (and far to my frustration) these native backups additionally do not include her complete message historical past, presumably as a result of she has iCloud sync turned on.
- Utilizing “Fast Begin”. It appeared like a promising thought: skip the iCloud intermediary and switch instantly from one cellphone to a different! However once we opened the Messages app for the primary time on the brand new cellphone, it was initially empty and began downloading messages from the server.
So here is the query:
- Is there a technique to power the outdated cellphone to renew syncing? with out Hit the dreaded “Deactivate and Obtain” button and danger shedding all of your messages?
- Alternatively, is there a technique to power an area backup of the cellphone containing your messages library, once more with out touching the D&D button?
- (More and more determined:) Is there a means (together with, I do not know, a command line instrument or a third-party app) to export your complete message library from the outdated cellphone and manually import them to the brand new cellphone?
- If neither may be carried out, is there a technique to export the whole message library to some big textual content file or PDF file so I can at the very least hold and learn Your outdated messages, even when they’re exterior the Messages app?
Any recommendation you possibly can provide could be appreciated, we’re stretched skinny with this. Just about your complete teenage social life was spent inside Messages, and you actually do not need to abruptly lose half of it directly.
