I am looking for a way to download and print a long SMS conversation with thousands of messages from my FP2. I would like to include emojis and pictures in the output. Since there are so many messages, screenshots or any method that requires me to select messages one by one will not work.
I have a FP2, with Fairphone Open 19.11.2. No google apps, and the phone is encrypted in case that makes a difference. Is there a way to achieve this?
So far my search has turned up articles that mention options or menu entries I don’t see on my phone, or involve installing paid apps from the app store (which so far I assumed I not have access to - I exclusively side-load apps. But admittedly, I have not tried).
Any and all help or feedback on directions to explore is greatly appreciated!
Yes, there are also MMS. I have not tried MyPhoneExplorer - I will check that out ASAP.
There is some progress. I can get an XML archive with TitaniumBackupPro. It takes ages, but eventually generates a com.keramidas.virtual.XML_MESSAGES-YYYYMMDD-hhmmss.xml.gz which contains the messages. I have had a hard time using that file to produce easily readable output, though.
I can also generate an .xml with associated .xsl using SMS Backup & Restore. This is cool, because I can select to export only a single conversation. I can then print the file on https://synctech.com.au/sms-backup-restore/view-backup/. Firefox takes ages to print this (well, it’s several hundred pages of PDF, at first I thought it crashed because it took so long). Chromium is faster, but only prints black and white emojis. Images are printed as well. The thing is that this is a no-frills tabular view of the messages, with half of the page occupied by message type (sent/received), exact date and time, and name/number for each message.
SMS Backup & Restore also proposes to print directly from the app, but it chokes on my ~5000-message conversation thread and crashes. I guess that’s asking a bit too much from my poor FP2.
SMS Backup, Print & Restore (notice the subtle difference in name to the previous app, not the same publisher) is not compatible with my phone. It’s a paid app, and I guess no dice without Google services.
SMS EasyExporter 2.5 lets me generate a .vmsg file. But then the app developers want me to upload that file to their servers. No way that will happen. Plus, they ask for USD9.99 for 30-min access to the PRO version to print the file
So I guess now the question has become how to pretty-print an email conversation from an .xml file, with a look similar to the conversation on the phone? Something nice to look at.
I am progressing - I’ll keep you updated when I find the solution.
Just a short update: MyPhoneExplorer works to transfer the messages, and I can print the conversation in Windows, but the images are not included in the PDF and I haven’t found a way to configure the printer (Mircosoft Print to PDF) correctly to reduce the number of pages. Output is still not the most beautiful. Emojis are in black and white only.
