How long does it take for your text messages to be backed up to the cloud in WP 8?

[Windows Central Question]

I'm transferring from one Lumia 1520 to another (cracked screen) and turned on text, app, and camera backup on the old phone to restore onto the new one that came in. I tried restoring on my own once last night (about a month's worth of messages transferred) then did a factory reset with a restore during setup this morning. I got a few months' worth of messages on the new restore, but I'm still missing about 5 months worth to the present. Any ideas on how long this text backup process takes or another way I can restore my messages?

 

[GrandGerminator]

As far as I know and as I eperienced, SMS sync only work for the sms you receive/send while the sync is active. It means that if you active the sync, only message sent en received after the sync will be uploaded. The old ones will not.

 

[TechFreak1]

As of right now there is no other way to restore text messages, your were able to access your text messages if you used an outlook.com account as your microsoft account on your phone. However they removed that functionality, I imagine due to privacy concerns?

If you choose to not restore during the set up wizard, you will need to login into the account (on the phone) which was previously connected as the microsoft account and turn on text message back up, it will then slowly restore your messages. The length of time it takes to restore depends on the number of saved messages.

 

[jmshub]

In my use, it can take a few hours to completely restore your text message backup onto your new phone.

 

[blackdalf]

OP here, this process has been really frustrating, but I found another link referencing the "Transfer My Data" app that shows how you can backup to SD card instead of going through Microsoft's "cloud" system. That's the route I would have preferred anyway, but the layout of the app made it seem like the garbage Bluetooth method was the only available. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[blackdalf]

Just used the "Transfer" app to move all my texts and MMS to the new phone using my SD card. Worked like a charm! I just have to do a little app maintenance and I won't be able to tell the difference between phones. The unreads are still unread and even the pictures showed up! Pretty spectacular.