App to export / import sms messages?

[lc79]

I accidentally deleted the entire conversation thread between my husband and myself the other day. Ahh! Is there a good way / app to get the messages back? (Preferably in my phone's sms system, not just a copy filed away on the computer.)

I've looked at a few apps, and downloaded sms backup and restore, so hopefully I can't do this again by accident and wipe out any more than a day or two (with scheduled backups.) I'm thinking I might be able to email an xml / csv file from his phone, open it in excel, sort and filter by sender (to remove texts to and from his other contacts, not me). Then I'm hoping maybe if I save it back to the SMS backup and restore folder on my phone, maybe I can "restore" it to my phone and the conversation will come back?

I'd like to have a record of our texts, but I'd REALLY like to get them back into my phone. Is this a pipe dream? Has anyone else done anything like this? Does it work? Is there an easier way to do it? Is there an app that allows you to export only conversations from particular contacts (to either save in email or restore on a lost / new phone, etc.)?

Thanks!!!

-Laurie

 

[lc79]

FYI - in case anyone runs into a similar issue, it worked.

What I did was:
- install SMS Backup & Restore (free app) on both phones.
- ran a backup of my husband's sms messages
- connected his phone to the computer, copied the xml file from the SMSBackup directory to the computer
- opened the file in excel
- sorted by phone number
- deleted all messages to his other contacts
- find/replace all changed the phone number from my number to his (since it came from his phone my number was listed for each message, and when I took it back to my phone I needed his number to be listed)
- changed all the 1's to 2's and the 2's to 1's in the "type" column - this seems to differentiate between sent and received (again, had to switch these because what's sent on his phone is received on mine)
- saved the file as an xml data
- connected my phone to the computer & copied the new file into the smsbackup folder on my phone
- ran sms restore and chose my new file - it imported the messages into our conversation! yay! (unfortunately he had auto-delete setup so I only have the last few hundred but its better than it was.)

 

[JosephAnton3]

Thank You!

Thank you so much for posting both your problem AND your solution. Very logical, detailed approach. Just know that you helped someone today!!!

 

[Chaldon]

Thanks lc79! I signed up to say it!

 

[k2snowboarder627]

thank you, very informative and helpful...much appreciated lc79