Hi Gary, I’d like to download and save an entire iMessage thread for posterity. I can no longer find iMessages in iCloud via the web based interface.
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Darren
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How Do I Backup an iMessage Thread?
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Go to the conversation in the Messages app. Then scroll back as far as you can go, so it forces as much of the conversation as you want to be loaded. Then choose File, Print. Then click the PDF button. This will produce a PDF copy of the conversation.
Thanks Gary! That sort of worked but the app crashes if I go back too far in time. My wrist hurts from scrolling back to Dec 2018. Any other suggestions?
Darren: Use the Page Up key (or FN+Up) instead of the mouse or trackpad. Not sure why it crashes on you, obviously it shouldn't. This is really your only option.
I figured out what was causing the app to crash. It was the attachments, in particular the movies (.mov) files. I went to System Settings > General > Storage then scrolled down to iMessages info and deleted all the attachments in there. Success!
Do you still have the messages on your phone? You can select the messages and forward them to your email. Or take screenshots of them, which will be a bit troublesome. Unless you want to try a paid tool, like fonedog ios data recovery.