How To Find Old Text Messages On iPhone Without Scrolling
Want to look up old messages on iPhone? This guide will show you how to find old text messages on iPhone without scrolling.
/ Last updateJanuary 28, 2022
How to Look Up Old Texts on iPhone without Scrolling
I’m trying to find some important messages from a few months ago. Is there a quick way to do this? I dont want to scroll through the whole text thread. Thanks!
– Question from Apple Community
How To Find Old Messages On iPhone Without Scrolling Via Spotlight Search
How to view old text messages on iPhone faster? Spotlight Search is a convenient tool on iPhone to search for contacts, songs, email, messages, calendar events, the App Store, Web, Maps and other apps. You can find old text messages on iPhone with Spotlight by following the procedure below.
- Step 1: From the middle of the home screen, swipe down.
- Step 2: Tap the search bar located at the top of the interface.
-
Step 3: Type in the context, relevant information, phrase or phone number of the deleted messages.
- Step 4: The results are displayed according to the apps. Select the message you are looking for by tapping it.
Easy Methods To Recover Deleted Messages On An iPhone Plus Which One Should Only Be Used As A Last Resort
Did you accidentally delete a text message and now you need to get it back? Fortunately, there are several methods to get back deleted text messages, so no need to worry! We’ll go over how to retrieve deleted messages from an iCloud backup, as well as a few other tips and tricks to recover deleted text messages on an iPhone.
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How To Extract Messages From Your iPhone Backup
While iCloud makes it easy to retrieve messages on your iPhone whenever needed, it doesnt provide any way to just extract messages from your iPhone backup for future reference. For instance, what if you want to get a copy of your past conversations to save on your PC as a memory? Well, there are several third-party tools that make it easy to export text messages from your iPhone to varied file formats such as pdf or txt. So lets check out the options.
Situation 3 You Have No Backup And The Messages Are Overwritten
If there is no backup file and then deleted text messages have been overwritten, there is still the last chance and option you can try asking help from your iPhone cellular provider or carrier, who may have stored your text messages on their servers.
And now, base on the possible situations where you may be stuck, we have collected 6 practical methods to help you get back deleted text messages on iPhone. And all methods support all iPhone models, including the newest iPhone 13 and iPhone 12 series.
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How To Retrieve Deleted Text Messages On An iPhone
Text messages can sometimes be hard to keep track of and often vanish under mysterious circumstances, including mistaken deletion, a flawed iOS upgrade, a jailbreak fail, or another unfortunate circumstance. Regardless of how they were lost, though, you can restore missing text messages to your iPhone most of the time.
Thats because your iPhone saves all text message, MMS, and iMessage data in an SQLite database an open-source, back-end utility built into all mobile phones and bundled into many popular apps. This function operates silently and automatically in the background.
Recover Deleted Text Messages From iPhone Backup
Now that the macOS Catalina has removed the iTunes app, you can no longer use iTunes to recover lost text messages. However, you can still retrieve deleted texts from iCloud if your text messages have previously been backed up. Heres how to do it:
- Step 1: Open Settings and tap on your name or picture at the top
- Step 2: Select iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups
- Step 3: Search to see if your old text messages are included in a prior back up
- Step 4: Restore your iPhone to the old backup. Go to General > Reset > Erase all content. When your phone resets, youll have the opportunity to restore it from an old back up .
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Highlights Of Primo iPhone Data Recovery
Regarded as one of the best iOS data recovery tools, Primo iPhone Data Recovery is capable of getting old iOS data back on iPhone 6/6s/7 without efforts. Here are some main features of it:
1. Supports getting old text messages on iPhone from iTunes/iCloud backup without data wiping or device restoring. You can retrieve your old text messages on iPhone with ease.
2. Supports exporting old text messages on iPhone in .text and html. format.
3. It is compatible with all models of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and works well on both Windows and Mac computer.
4. It also supports recovering deleted iOS data like , , , videos, bookmarks, calendars and more from iDevices with or without backup.
Use Your Icloud Backup
If your service provider cant help you, your next best bet is your iCloud backup. Bruce Hogan, the cofounder and CEO of SoftwarePundit, outlines following these step-by-step instructions:
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Back Up Old Messages On Computer
Hopefully one of the methods listed has retrieved old text messages on iPhone. Remember, though, that you should always back up your phone to make sure your messages threads and other files dont vanish anymore.
While you can use the back up the device to cloud or on computer the Apple way, here we introduce the iOS Data Backup & Restore feature integrated in iPhone Data Recovery to help you handle this task. With it, you can select just the types of data you need to back up, and restore it whenever you need. Here’s how to do.
1. Connect your iPhone to computer and launch iPhone Data Recovery software.
2. Click More Tools at the lower left side.
3. In the next opening window, select iOS Data Backup & Restore tab
4. Click Standard backup. Or select Encrypted backup if you want to keep the data secure.
5. Check the boxes next to data types you want to back up.
6. Click Next to initial the backup process.
Bonus Tip 1 Backup Your iPhone
Backing up your iPhone must be the most efficient way to rescue your deleted text messages when they are gone. So no matter what you are doing with your iPhone for upgrading, restoring, jailbreaking, or more, please back up your iPhone. And the best option that we sincerely recommend is backing iPhone up regularly. If you have no idea of how to back up your iPhone, here is a guide you can refer to How to Backup iPhone to iTunes/iCloud/PC/Mac > >
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Recover Deleted Text Messages From iPhone/ipad Without Backup
PhoneRescue for iOS is a professional iPhone data recovery tool. It offers you 3 recovery modes all in one place: Recover from iOS Device, , and Recover from iCloud. These three Recovery Modes ensure you the highest rate of recovery. And Recover from the iOS Device enables you to directly get deleted/lost messages back from iPhone or iPad. The steps are simple & quick, with no tech skill needed, iPhone messages can get recovered in clicks. Besides, you can preview and choose messages to recover with more flexibility.
So, if you want to retrieve deleted text messages on iPhone without backup, Phonerescue for iOS is the first and best way to preview the messages and get them back:
Step 1. to your PC or Mac computer, install and run it.
* 100% Clean & Safe
Step 2. Connect your iPhone to the computer using a USB cable, choose Recover from iOS Device and click Right Arrow to continue.
Choose Recover from iOS Device
Step 3. Check the Messages category and click Okay to scan only the deleted messages on iPhone.
Choose Messages to Scan
Step 4. Preview and recover deleted text conversations. After scanning, you can see the text conversations as below. Check the items that you want to recover, and click the To Computer or To Device button to retrieve them back to your computer or your iPhone.
Preview and Choose to Recover Texts to Computer or iPhone
Recover From Icloud Backup With Phonerescue For Ios
Step 1. to your PC or Mac, install and run it.
Step 2. Select Recover from iCloud.
Step 3. Sign in to your iCloud account. Now you should Log in with your Apple ID and password, PhoneRescue will extract data from iCloud.
Sign in iCloud in PhoneRescue
Step 4. Click iCloud Backup.
Choose iCloud Backup
Step 5. Download backup based on its created time, size, and iOS version, and then select only Messages to get all message conversations on your iCloud backup.
Step 6. Preview the conversations on iCloud backup, check the items you want to recover, and click To Device to recover them to your iPhone. Or click To Computer to save text messages and iMessages to the computer.
Recover Messages to iPhone or Computer
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Best Ways To Recover Deleted Text Messages On An iPhone
If you are determined to retrieve deleted text messages on your iPhone, you can look through your backups to see if you have backups that were made after you got your message but before you deleted it. If you have a backup created in that time slot, you should be able to restore your lost info. Alternatively, you can also contact your phone network operator to see if they store your texts and are able to help you out.
Recover any data with Setapp
Try a collection of recovery tools that help you bring deleted messages, files, and photos back. Free for 7 days.
Lets look through all the ways how to undelete messages on iPhone.
How Do I Search Imessage Threads
First, open the Messages app. If you are in a Conversation view, press the back arrow until you are on the main Messages screen. Tap on the Search bar near the top of the screen, then type what youd like to search for. The screen will change into a list of top Conversations that match your search.
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S To Recover Deleted Messages On iPhone Using Icloud Backup:
Step 1: Visit the settings option on your iPhone.
Step 2: Click on the Apple ID profile at the top.
Step 3: Now open iCloud and select manage storage.
Step 4: Then choose backups and select the backup that was used prior to the date that you deleted that needs to be recovered.
Step 5: Next, scroll down to find the Messages backup.
Step 6: You need to reset your iPhone, which needs to remove the content and data that are stored.
Step 7: You can only proceed once you have the texts available in the backup files that carry the deleted messages.
Step 8: Once done, you need to go to the settings, then select General and choose Transfer or Reset iPhone and click on Erase All Content and Settings.
Step 9: Now the iOS device will take a few minutes to get back from a reboot.
Step 10: The options will arise on recovering the backup and now you have to select the correct backup from there.
How To See Old Messages On An iPhone With The Hidden Scroll
Scrolling can become tiresome after a few vertical swipes along the screen. A faster navigation method is to tap at the top of the screen and let it instantly scroll a few messages at a time.
It’ll take a lot of tapping on the top of the iMessage screen to take you back in time to the beginning of the message thread. But it’s more comfortable than swiping to scroll, which gets frustrating quickly.
Tip: This method works on every app on iOS.
But is there a faster way to reach that old message on your iPhone that doesn’t involve scrolling?
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Restoring Texts From Your Mac
If you back up on your computer, you may have a series of backups already saved. To get started, first disable Find My iPhone on your handset. Tap Settings > Your Name > Find My > Find My iPhone and switch the toggle off. Now, do the following:
Step 1: Connect your phone to your computer via USB.
Step 2: Open the Finder by double-clicking on your Hard Drive icon.
Step 3: Under the Locations sidebar, look for your iPhone and click on it.
Step 4: Click Manage Backups to view all the saved backups and choose which one you want to restore your messages. The backup should predate when you deleted the messages.
Step 5: Click Restore iPhone.
How To Recover Deleted Text Messages On iPhone Using An Icloud Backup
Below are the steps that you can take to recover deleted text messages on your iPhone using an iCloud backup. Before beginning with the process, it is important to point out that you need to have Messages enabled as a part of your iCloud backups to restore your previous text messages from the cloud.
In case you don’t want to erase all your content and data from your iPhone but want to restore messages stored on iCloud, you can retrieve them by logging into iCloud.com. Below are the steps on how you can do that.
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Recover Deleted Text Messages On iPhone Without Backup
Your iPhone text messages are vulnerable to sudden and casual mistakendeletions. Even worse, these is no Trash bin in your message box to retrieve them. Insome cases, you may fail to create backup for your iPhone as iTunes on your computer oriCloud backup service is somehow unavailable. Does it mean you’ll lose your textmessages for ever? Probably not. Here’s the last life-saving straw.
Omni Recover is the safest and mostefficientiPhone Text MessageRecovery software that’s made to retrieve your deleted SMS texts and iMessageson your iPhone, even without backup. It offers two recovery channels: Recover DeletedTexts from iPhone or Recover Deleted Texts from iTunes Backup. Either way works great incertain circumstances and when you’re in complicated situation, Omni Recover would giveyou multi-layered iPhone Texts Recovery plan. Follow steps below to start recoveringyour deleted text messages on your iPhone.
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How To Extract Text Messages From iPhone Backup With Iexplorer
Step #1. First, on your Mac or Windows computer.
Step #2. Connect your iPhone to your computer with a USB cable and open iExplorer.
Step #3. In the Device Overview screen, click the Data tab
Step #4. Now, click on Messages.
Step #5. If you have not created an iTunes backup yet on the computer youre connected to, you will be asked if you want to make one . If you already have an iTunes backup , iExplorer will ask whether youd like to Use Last Backup or Refresh to create a new one.
Step #6. After the iTunes backup is done, iExplorer will load your Messages on the screen. You can select a conversation in the left panel and use the icons at the top to filter by date range, show attachments, etc.
Step #7. In the conversation box, you can choose to export the entire chat. Or you may select specific message bubbles to export.
Step #8. At the bottom of the screen, theres an option to Export All Conversations.
You can choose to export the text messages from iPhone backup to different file formats such as PDF, TXT, or CSV. Best of all, this tool is free to try.
For continued use though, you will need to purchase the product for $39.99 from macroplant.com
Alternatively, there are some other tools that also allow you to extract text messages from an iPhone backup. Lets have a look.
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