Guide to restoring threaded SMS

[scotchua]

Since threaded sms arrive with WM6.1 it seems that it has been difficult to get PIM Backup to restore your messages properly threaded on a consistent basis. Now many people will advise you to just delete your sms, but if you are a person who likes to keep them (like myself) then that simply is not an acceptable option. Through a lot of trial and error i have arrived at a process that seems to work well and work consistantly across many roms. Below is a brief tutorial of the steps I follow in order to restore my sms messages using PIM Backup:

You will need Kaisertweak to follow these instructions, and as such i have attached the cab to this post. Please remember to donate the the developers who bring you all of this fine software as a sign of your appreciation for all that they do for you.

Perform the following steps:

1) Disable threading using Kaisertweaks.
2) Kill sms/mms process using task manager (tmail.exe)
3) Restore messages using PIM Backup
4) Open to see they were restored correctly (meaning the right number of messages are in the inbox/outbox)
5) Soft-reset your device.
6) Enable threading using Kaisertweaks.
7) Open sms/mms, if the inbox appears empty then messages start appearing then do nothing as the device is threading your messages. Just wait till it is done. If this is not happening then go to step 8.
8) Kill sms/mms process (tmail.exe) using task manager, and open sms/mms again. This time you should definitely see the message threading.

Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any suggestions of what to add or how to make this post clearer (for suggestions i'd prefer them by PM)

***EDIT***

I have also found that PowerSMS does a great job of rethreading your SMS messages as well as PIMBackup, so if you have troubles getting this to work with PIMBackup, then try that program. I will outline the steps I followed:

1) Disable threading
2) Kill tmail.exe
3) Make Backup using PowerSMS
4) Flash new rom
5) Disable threaded SMS & kill tmail.exe
6) Restore SMS
7) Enable Threading
8) Leave the phone alone while it rethreads the messages, can take up to 10 minutes depending on how many messages you have. I restored over 3,000.

***UPDATE***
It has been reported that you do not need to disable threading if you are using PowerSMS. This means you can do the following:

1) Kill tmail.exe
2) Make Backup using PowerSMS
3) Flash new rom
4) Restore SMS
5) Leave the phone alone while it rethreads the messages, can take up to 10 minutes depending on how many messages you have.

[keethar]

Didn't try it yet, but thanks!

[outphase]

I have tried many of these methods, but restoring always put my sent messages first and my received messages after.

In the alternative, I recommend Jeyo SMS Backup as it restores threading properly without a hassle.

[DaveShaw]

Nice guide mate, so obvious now you've posted it, why didn't I think of this :rolleyes:

This method has also had limitted success: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1903404&postcount=749

I would add this to the PIM backup thread if I were you and maybe PM DotFred to get it on the first post. (Or get a mod to do it if they can) :)

A Couple of things...
Where is the aformentioned attachment? :p
What is the SMS/MMS process, TMail.exe I assume?

Dave

[scotchua]

Nice guide mate, so obvious now you've posted it, why didn't I think of this :rolleyes:

This method has also had limitted success: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1903404&postcount=749

I would add this to the PIM backup thread if I were you and maybe PM DotFred to get it on the first post. (Or get a mod to do it if they can) :)

A Couple of things...
Where is the aformentioned attachment? :p
What is the SMS/MMS process, TMail.exe I assume?

Dave

Thanks for the suggestions, i will post it there, and PM dotfred. Also i have updated the first post to specify tmail.exe, and added the cab.

[Lennart88]

Just wanted to say that I tried this method and it worked perfectly :)
Had around 1500 text messages, so it took about 10-15 minutes on the new rom to load them all back into the threaded sms, but finally all was good again :)

Thanks!

[scotchua]

Just wanted to say that I tried this method and it worked perfectly :)
Had around 1500 text messages, so it took about 10-15 minutes on the new rom to load them all back into the threaded sms, but finally all was good again :)

Thanks!

Thank you for the feedback. I also have 1500+ sms at any given time so i was glad to find a method that finally worked as well. :)

[Viper®]

Seems like it's working.

But with the non-threaded sms i can see the time and date on each text message.

In the threaded sms style, you can only see the time from the day you're on. Older text messages just have the date.

Is there a fix for this ?

[cushcalc]

Seems like it's working.

But with the non-threaded sms i can see the time and date on each text message.

In the threaded sms style, you can only see the time from the day you're on. Older text messages just have the date.

Is there a fix for this ?

There should be a way, because the information is still there, somewhere. I know, because I use Extreme Text, which is just a nicer interface for doing threaded text messaging (uses the same data, doesn't disturb normal Messaging program) - and all the times of day are there for all messages going back several months.

[Viper®]

Yeah,

If you disable threaded sms and you restore all your text messages you still have the dates and times, it's just not shown in the default threaded.

[rwcozens]

Great thread pal. Tried it and worked perfectly. Always had problems restoring messages and the dates and times always were distorted....Not anymore though. Thanks

[scotchua]

I'm glad this is helping people out. Thank you all for your confirmations.

[bittermormon]

Just a quick note, this worked for me as well using PIMBackup. I used Advanced Config instead of KaiserTweak. Such a simple solution, but I'm glad you thought of it.

[vinalius]

worked perfectly.....
thanks for the share

[drutort]

for some reason my MMS msgs from windows 5 would not transfer :/ on some of the roms i had it work some how, but i tried to create a "MMS" account with fake email stuff and set it to manual so it would not try to get info or download and it seems to have fooled it, for a sec, you see the subject and the size of the file but when you open them they are blank :/

im wondering if there is any way to move them outside of that MMS account to the real sms/mms folder?

is there any way to read the pimbackup in desktop computer and extract those msgs?

when i mean it doesnt work it simply says during restore process that the MMS account does not exist and all files will be ignored

[bknewtype]

Since threaded sms arrive with WM6.1 it seems that it has been difficult to get PIM Backup to restore your messages properly threaded on a consistent basis. Now many people will advise you to just delete your sms, but if you are a person who likes to keep them (like myself) then that simply is not an acceptable option. Through a lot of trial and error i have arrived at a process that seems to work well and work consistantly across many roms. Below is a brief tutorial of the steps I follow in order to restore my sms messages using PIM Backup:

You will need Kaisertweak to follow these instructions, and as such i have attached the cab to this post. Please remember to donate the the developers who bring you all of this fine software as a sign of your appreciation for all that they do for you.

Perform the following steps:

1) Disable threading using Kaisertweaks.
2) Kill sms/mms process using task manager (tmail.exe)
3) Restore messages using PIM Backup
4) Open to see they were restored correctly (meaning the right number of messages are in the inbox/outbox)
5) Soft-reset your device.
6) Enable threading using Kaisertweaks.
7) Open sms/mms, if the inbox appears empty then messages start appearing then do nothing as the device is threading your messages. Just wait till it is done. If this is not happening then go to step 8.
8) Kill sms/mms process (tmail.exe) using task manager, and open sms/mms again. This time you should definitely see the message threading.

Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any suggestions of what to add or how to make this post clearer (for suggestions i'd prefer them by PM)

***EDIT***

I have also found that PowerSMS does a great job of rethreading your SMS messages as well as PIMBackup, so if you have troubles getting this to work with PIMBackup, then try that program. I will outline the steps I followed:

1) Disable threading
2) Kill tmail.exe
3) Make Backup using PowerSMS
4) Flash new rom
5) Disable threaded SMS & kill tmail.exe
6) Restore SMS
7) Enable Threading
8) Leave the phone alone while it rethreads the messages, can take up to 10 minutes depending on how many messages you have. I restored over 3,000.

***UPDATE***
It has been reported that you do not need to disable threading if you are using PowerSMS. This means you can do the following:

1) Kill tmail.exe
2) Make Backup using PowerSMS
3) Flash new rom
4) Restore SMS
5) Leave the phone alone while it rethreads the messages, can take up to 10 minutes depending on how many messages you have.

this seem like an excellent thread. however i am havign a few problems. when i do PIM restore, it says it had retreived about over 4000 files. after restore i check my messages. most, if not, all of them r just messages that i have sent. i have waited over an hour and none of the messages i got from my friends are showing up. how ever, i see in the preview the first 100 text that are from my friends but not in the threaded

edit*
ok it seems that i have got all the text messages on the phone. however, the order is all off. some of them shows the recieved messages before all of my sent ones, and some of them vice versa. some of them has the dates going b ackwards. can someone help me on this?

[bknewtype]

anyone? =[

[Psyki]

The way I do it is very simple and has worked every time across multiple hard-resets. The key is to do all your backup and restoring in CLASSIC mode, not THREADED mode.

1) Set text messaging from threaded to classic
2) PPCPimBackup all text messaging
3) Perform hard-reset
4) Set text messaging from threaded to classic AGAIN after hard-reset
5) Restore PPCPimBackup
6) Set text messaging back to threaded!

I have only tried this on my Touch Pro but it has worked multiple times. If you skip any step when going from threaded to classic you get the problem where the threaded messages are all out of order. Also if you receive new un-backed up messages after the hard reset the restore will work as long as you configure text messaging to classic before restoring.

:)

[Loner2DEnd]

When restoring sms with more then 4000 it appears that the really long ones don't rethread correctly.. all the others will but the ones with a lot loads the received first followed by all the sent.. is there a fix for this?

[bigasif]

Hey guys, I've got a problem.

So I made a PIMbackup of all my sms's. I then flashed my phone to another ROM and tried restoring the sms's. Didn't seem to work properly, so I then hard reset the phone and disabled SMS threading. I then restored the texts from the backup file, and then re-enabled threading.

Now, all the texts are there, however, they're pretty much sorted according to date.

For example, if I had a sms convo of about 5 msgs back and forth between a friend and I, it's sorted by that day where it has all of their messages first (incoming) and then my messages after (outgoing).

So they are threaded, but they're split into incoming then outgoing for each day per person.

Does anyone know how to fix this? It doesn't seem to be threading properly...does anyone have or had a similar problem? Thanks!

BiGaSiF

[richyrich552003]

nice one worked a treat for me a big thanks