First of all, this is not a huge deal, but...

I went to search through my old messages looking for one particular thread from about a year ago. It was an exchange i had with a potential Cragslist seller. Everything was fine, he seemed like a nice guy but the transaction just didn't work out for me, and I was curious if ended up selling to someone else.

Anyway, I looked back about a month ago and again a few weeks ago, and I was able to find the short exchange easily enough. Unfortunately i figured they'd always be there, so I never thought to write down the person's phone number (I have only a first name). Well, I went to look again a few days ago and I could scroll no further back than about a year. I also contacted the service provider and they can only go back a year as well.

I don't use iCloud to back up. Rather, when I think of it, I use iTunes to back up my phone. Is it likely older messages would be in a previous iTunes phone backup? If so, any idea how I'd go about accessing them?

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wurm
Is it likely older messages would be in a previous iTunes phone backup? If so, any idea how I'd go about accessing them?

iMazing should let you see what messages are in your backups.

[imazing.com]

Hmmm...with a little more searching I discovered this one. [www.imactools.com]

Anybody here familiar with it?

Wow. Just wow. I downloaded the app and installed it. Opened it up, entered my encryption password (I guessed right on the second try) and it opened right up and all my Messages from my previous backup were right there. I found what I was looking for in less than a minute. Total time from download to Quit was probably less than 5 minutes.

And oh yeah, it's free!

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GGD

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wurm
Is it likely older messages would be in a previous iTunes phone backup? If so, any idea how I'd go about accessing them?

iMazing should let you see what messages are in your backups.

[imazing.com]

I had iMazing on my iMac for a while, but after getting constant update messages (seemed like one a week) I threw it out. Worse than Firefox, or iTunes, both of which are mightily annoying, too.

/Mr Lynn