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Merge texts from two message threads?

bugman58

Lurker
Jul 23, 2018
7
1
My son got a new phone & new number.

I have a long thread of text messages to/from his old number, I thought when I added his NEW number to his contact record in my phone (Samsung Galaxy S9+) & deleted his OLD number, I would still see the same thread of messages just with his new phone number - but not so. My phone has started a NEW thread with his NEW number... so now I have this other thread from his old number with hundreds of text messages in it. Surely there is a way to merge this old text thread with the new one started with his new phone number?

Any help is appreciated!
 
The problem is that while the message app presents the messages by contact name, that's just presentation. The threads are actually defined by the number, which is why the old and new texts appear in different threads.

Of course there are workarounds possible, it just depends on how willing you are to mess about with things. One possibility that occurs to me is the following:

* Install a message backup app that stores its backups as XML files (the venerable SMS Backup and Restore uses that format, for example).

* Back up your messages.

* Copy the backup to a computer (you don't want to do the next bit with a phone). Rename it so that when you copy it back to your phone it doesn't overwrite the existing backup (if anything goes wrong you want an intact backup to restore your messages from).

* Use a text editor to change your son's old number to the new one in every message (global search and replace).

* Copy the edited backup file back to your phone, in the same folder the original came from.

* Restore your messages from backup, and choose the file you just edited.

The idea here is just to change the number in all of the old messages to the new number so that the message app sees them as all part of the same conversation. An XML backup was proposed because that's a plain text file, and so something that a text editor can modify.

Caveats:
* I've never done this. So this whole idea is theoretical. I'm sure the principle is sound, but it's untested and I can't guarantee I've not overlooked some subtlety. That is why keeping an unmodified copy of the backup is vital.

* I've not even looked at the actual format of the backup file (I tried, but it's bigger than any of the editors on my phone will open). So I'm taking a guess that the only change needed would be to modify the phone number (it seems a reasonable guess, but I can't be sure).

* The app I named does not back up RCS ("advanced messaging" or "chat") messages. I hope that that also means it doesn't overwrite them when restoring SMS/MMS, but as I've never used that stuff this is only a guess. It does mean that if those form part of what you are trying to combine you'll need to find a different app to do it.

Anyway, that was the first workaround that occurred to me. I don't know whether others will have other ideas.
 
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