I had a whole important conversation in my text messages and I accidentally deleted it. I haven't backed-up my phone in two weeks, so I'm wondering if there's a chance to get back that conversation with the messages from that person? It's important. Thank you.
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Did you have Messaging backup on? (Somewhat separate from "backing up your phone".) If not, then your carrier would be the one to check with. – RareNCool Sep 23 '15 at 14:30
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2Drop a note to NSA.GOV and see if they'd send you a copy... ;-) – HerrBag Sep 23 '15 at 20:31
Annoyingly, the only reliable way that anybody seems to know of to access phone backups is to activate your Microsoft Account on a phone for the first time. You can use a second phone for this, or just hard-reset your current phone. If you were backing up text messages - and haven't made a new backup since you deleted the important conversation - you should be able to restore the conversation that way.
Partial answer that I just discovered: it is possible, via Outlook.com, to view SMS messages you've backed up. Taken from this answer, which should have a lot more upvotes:
- Go to https://outlook.com/. Log in with the Microsoft Account used on your phone.
- Click the Gear icon in the upper right, next to your photo. Select
Manage Categories
(orOptions
, thenManage Categories
on the next screen). - Check the boxes under "Show in folder pane" for Contacts and Photos. You can check the others too, if you want.
- Go back to your inbox, and you'll see a list of "Categories" on the left-side panel.
Under Contacts
, you will see your backed-up SMS, but so far as I can tell only the ones that you've received appear there (and only if you use "Arrange by Conversation").
Under Photos
, you will see your backed up MMS (at least, the ones containing images), both sent and received.
Hope that's enough to help you out!