Text Message backup not restored (maybe deleted completely) after insider build 14322.

[drg]

Youcan download an app called Windows Phone Message Backup on your Windows 10 PC and you will be able to see all your messages there. You can't export or reply or anything but at least you will feel safe knowing your messages still exist. If you have latest insider build on windows 10 PC you can see them in the Skype Messaging app.

As for the issue of messages not restoring, I was on .164 and messages weren't coming in for a long while. Then all of a sudden on April 8 they started coming in. I checked with a few other guys I knew who were on the same build and had the same issue and they're messages starting coming through at the same time. I tweeted Gabe if something happened back end and got a reply from Jason (another MS dude) sounding like they did do something back end:

Anyways I'm on 218 now but haven't done a hard reset so not sure if the issue is there again or not but by the sounds of it it is and I'm guessing it's a backend issue again and you gonna have to be patient till they start come through again. But I'm pretty sure you can rest assured your texts haven't been deleted. Just check the app I mentioned above to make sure.

 

[pankaj981]

Re: Text Message backup not restored (maybe deleted completely) after insider bui...

The one thing that bugs me is that we have no idea how it's supposed to work. Is there a page where MS describes the SMS/MMS backup logic? How should it behave with multiple devices that have different sync durations, how does it handle conflicts, where is the data stored and maybe even in what format, etc.

Well its a infrastructure back-end thing which I don't believe any company would reveal. Besides until now I have this issue only on the last build. On all WM/WP on all OS versions by message history has always restored after a clean install (without restoring backups).

 

[GrayW0lf]

Re: Text Message backup not restored (maybe deleted completely) after insider bui...

Well its a infrastructure back-end thing which I don't believe any company would reveal. Besides until now I have this issue only on the last build. On all WM/WP on all OS versions by message history has always restored after a clean install (without restoring backups).

You make a good point. However, the whole SMS restore functionality has been "broken" for me for over a month now. I'm patient, but this is getting to be kind of crazy.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

Youcan download an app called Windows Phone Message Backup on your Windows 10 PC and you will be able to see all your messages there. You can't export or reply or anything but at least you will feel safe knowing your messages still exist. If you have latest insider build on windows 10 PC you can see them in the Skype Messaging app.

As for the issue of messages not restoring, I was on .164 and messages weren't coming in for a long while. Then all of a sudden on April 8 they started coming in. I checked with a few other guys I knew who were on the same build and had the same issue and they're messages starting coming through at the same time. I tweeted Gabe if something happened back end and got a reply from Jason (another MS dude) sounding like they did do something back end:

Anyways I'm on 218 now but haven't done a hard reset so not sure if the issue is there again or not but by the sounds of it it is and I'm guessing it's a backend issue again and you gonna have to be patient till they start come through again. But I'm pretty sure you can rest assured your texts haven't been deleted. Just check the app I mentioned above to make sure.

This app gives you plenty of historical messages, but stops in August 2015 for me and many others.

 

[Allen Rhodes]

Stops on October for some contacts and November for others. Weird. Just tells me the servers are still screwed up. I've got a 920 that I turned off in Jan but synced messages til that point. So I KNOW it saved them until January at least. Highly doubt all our messages are gone. Cmon, it's MS. It's not like the server is some crap Dell machine on some dudes desk. They have redundancies of redundancies, at the very least.

 

[Maurizio Troso]

Stops on October for some contacts and November for others. Weird. Just tells me the servers are still screwed up. I've got a 920 that I turned off in Jan but synced messages til that point. So I KNOW it saved them until January at least. Highly doubt all our messages are gone. Cmon, it's MS. It's not like the server is some crap Dell machine on some dudes desk. They have redundancies of redundancies, at the very least.

I hope, I downloaded all my sms via Windows Phone Message Backup pc app, for hours and hours till stopped to October 30th 2015

 

[msirapian]

My investigations on this questions led me to think that, towards build 10549/10572 (IIRC), they switched the backup architecture. Before 10572 (including WP8/8.1), SMS were restored one by one. Since 10572, SMS restore thread by thread (contact by contact if you prefer). And since then, they are duplicates, missing SMS, etc. Because, yes, the texts are there somewhere in the cloud, but if you look at them carefully, some may be missing. Even during a day, a 5-7 messages long conversation, one or two will miss.

And we don't know if they miss because they were not saved, or not restored.

On TH2 and first RS1 builds (on PC), SMS used to appear in the Messaging app, when using the search function. I could see there some texts, which were never restored on any of my phones.

And because my 535 (insider fast) and 950 (TH2/Production) are both dual sim, the contacts+backup app is not an option (doesn't handle dual sims properly).

Experimenting/playing with SMS without warning users (and this concerns non-Insiders too) is a bit irresponsible to my eyes.

 

[C LaBelle]

Downloading my messages now on my PC! So relieved to see the ones from my mother! Is there any way to save them to a PC or anything? I know they are on Onedrive somewhere but I'd like my own copy.

 

[Joe920]

Downloading my messages now on my PC! So relieved to see the ones from my mother! Is there any way to save them to a PC or anything? I know they are on Onedrive somewhere but I'd like my own copy.

Phew, so glad you got them back. I see that my old (and much less important) messages have also started downloading. Did they fix it or are we just lucky?

 

[C LaBelle]

Well so far I only have the messages on my PC, not phone. I'll see if there is any change on the phone, also dealing with a Contact issue as well now.

 

[Maurizio Troso]

Good news, yesterday 22:00 GMT synched everything all at once

 

[xandros9]

I don't know the time, but I got all my texts! I believe it covers just about all of the times I used Windows Phone even back to 2013 I believe and a short stint using .164 before I hard reset my 640 again, despite appearing broken back then.

 

[GrayW0lf]

I'm still waiting. Lucky me?

 

[msirapian]

Some of mine have started to return on the 535. Very last ones actually, restored by thread. Now stuck on my wife's thread, but if it's downloading all existing messages, it means daily chit-chat back to end of 2013 lol. So I'm not touching anything there to not disturb the process. I'll fire the VM running W10 Insider Fast to see how it goes PC-wise.

 

[msirapian]

Still stuck; I've been into my wife's thread, last messages are there (seconds don't seem to be recorded, so sometimes during a quick chat, the questions/answers are not in the right order, but that's OK). So this week's messages, and then, a big gap, and I have messages from september 2015. Nothing in between

 

[Maurizio Troso]

I confirm my spare lumia didn't sync

 

[msirapian]

Brilliant. It has kept on restoring on the 535, now I have plenty of threads coming back, while my wife's thread has also caught up with missing messages.

I'd say 15% it still missing, but it *looks* like it's really synced.

 

[GrayW0lf]

I still haven't seen a single old text download to a phone yet. It's disappointing that only my PC can see my old texts.

Interestingly, if I log out of the Messaging app on the PC and then log back in, my old texts of away and do not come back.

They have a lot of work to get through here.

 

[Stephen570]

Same thing happened to me. Went back to current production build, no luck for days. But just in the last 48 hours or so all my old messages restored.

 

[C LaBelle]

Two days ago all my texts came back magically. Hmm