This is our state of affairs: my daughter is making an attempt emigrate from an previous iPhone 7 to a (less-old) iPhone 12. The complete migration went with out a hitch aside from one giant-sized hitch: roughly half of her Message historical past doesn’t present up on the brand new cellphone. On additional investigation, we’ve got decided the next:
- iCloud Message syncing is turned On on the older cellphone. Nonetheless, on that cellphone Messages are taking on 5.6 GB of storage, and in iCloud messages are solely taking on 2.8 GB of storage.
- On her Macbook Air (which is also signed in to the identical iCloud account) Messages are taking on 2.8 GB of storage (similar as in iCloud); and many the messages that she will see and skim in her previous cellphone don’t present up in her Macbook Air. These lacking messages seem like scattered randomly all through her message historical past (or no less than we’ve got not been capable of finding any sample to which of them are lacking), and (so far as we will inform) are the identical messages that aren’t displaying up within the iPhone 12.
All of this appears to strongly recommend that the issue is that messages are usually not importing from the previous cellphone to iCloud. The obvious factor to strive subsequent could be to show off iCloud Message syncing on the iPhone 7 after which flip it again on once more to see if that forces a resync. Nonetheless, once we try to do this we get the “Disable and obtain?” immediate, and we’re very leery of happening that path, as a result of (stunning twist) we’ve got been on this very same state of affairs earlier than, with a distinct (even older) cellphone, and once we hit the “Disable and obtain?” button all the messages that had been regionally saved however not backed as much as iCloud had been completely deleted from the cellphone and couldn’t be recovered.
(Parenthetically: I do not know if that is what “Disable and obtain?” is supposed to do, however we’ve got additionally encountered different individuals on-line who’ve had the identical expertise, together with some who’ve explicitly warned customers to not belief Apple Retailer “Genius” workers, lots of whom will faucet that button with out understanding that it has precisely the alternative impact of what’s supposed.)
Simply to finish the story, we’ve got tried organising the iPhone 12 three other ways:
- From an iCloud backup — this clearly didn’t work, for the reason that iCloud backup is incomplete.
- From a neighborhood backup on a pc. She backs up her cellphone frequently however apparently (and to my nice frustration) these native backups do not include her full Message historical past both, presumably as a result of she has iCloud syncing turned on.
- Utilizing “Fast Begin”. This appeared like a promising thought — skip the iCloud intermediary and switch straight from one cellphone to the opposite! 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 right here is the ask:
- Is there some strategy to drive the previous cellphone to renew syncing with out tapping the dreaded ‘Disable and obtain’ button and threat shedding all of her messages?
- Alternatively, is there some strategy to drive a neighborhood backup of the cellphone that accommodates her message library, once more with out tapping the D & D button?
- (Getting more and more determined:) Is there a way (together with, I do not know, a command-line device or third celebration app) to export her full Message library from the previous cellphone and import them manually into the brand new cellphone?
- If neither of these may be performed, is there some strategy to export your entire Message library into some large textual content archive or PDF file in order that she will no less than preserve and learn her previous messages, even when exterior of the Messages app itself?
Any recommendation you possibly can supply could be appreciated, we’re at our wits’ finish with this. Virtually her total teenage social life was performed inside Messages and he or she actually doesn’t need to all of a sudden lose half of it at one go.
