Android - texts to CSV file?

Pawnless Endgame · 13 Feb 2011 at 17:23

I've reached the default 200 thread size limit on most of my buddies now and the OS is getting a bit laggy in response. Before I trash them all, I wonder if there's an Android app (preferably off Appbrain) that will dump the conversations as a file readable by a computer? I.e. .CSV or plain .TXT. I did do a search before posting. Thanks guys.

SKILL · 13 Feb 2011 at 17:42

SMS Backup and Restore puts them into an XML file on your sd card.

http://www.appbrain.com/app/sms-backup-restore/com.riteshsahu.SMSBackupRestore

Pawnless Endgame · 13 Feb 2011 at 17:57

Perfect, thanks!

Pawnless Endgame · 15 Feb 2011 at 01:35

SKILL, just a follow up message to say that this is completely the ticket. The author included stylesheets too for linear and threaded view, plus you can view it in Excel. Thanks again.

Aod · 15 Feb 2011 at 02:04

if you want, you can also extract the SMS-storage file directly from Android by using ADB to pull this file:

/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/smsmms.db

and then using any SQL-database viewer to open it and peruse the texts at your leisure.

andshrew · 15 Feb 2011 at 13:31

Aod said:
if you want, you can also extract the SMS-storage file directly from Android by using ADB to pull this file:

/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/smsmms.db

and then using any SQL-database viewer to open it and peruse the texts at your leisure.

That's really useful, thanks for posting that.

I presume the pictures from MMS aren't actually stored in this; if this is the case do you know where they are by any chance?

Aod · 15 Feb 2011 at 14:13

andshrew said:
That's really useful, thanks for posting that.

I presume the pictures from MMS aren't actually stored in this; if this is the case do you know where they are by any chance?

you know, i have no idea.

i've only gotten three MMS's in the past four years so i've never thought to look into it.

(My Final year dissertation is on Android forensics - i'd not thought to look into MMS's )

It's likely that the images for the MMS's will be on the SDcard somewhere, but i'll look into it when i have the opportunity

andshrew · 15 Feb 2011 at 22:50

Aod said:
you know, i have no idea.

i've only gotten three MMS's in the past four years so i've never thought to look into it.

(My Final year dissertation is on Android forensics - i'd not thought to look into MMS's )

It's likely that the images for the MMS's will be on the SDcard somewhere, but i'll look into it when i have the opportunity

I don't get that many but I have a few contacts who still send them (they've not quite caught up with Smartphone era yet..!) and I've found the backup apps I've tried aren't actually that great at backing these up.

I've had a look into it this evening and its actually pretty simple, just for reference in case your interested... the MMS files are stored in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts/ with names such as PART_xxxx. These are the actual files just lacking their extension... the details of these are stored in part table of the mmssms.db you mention. If you run a query to select from the _data and ct columns in this table you'll get the file location and the type of file (i.e. image/jpeg) - you could then download the file and put the correct extension back on and away you go.

Aod · 16 Feb 2011 at 03:25

andshrew said:
I don't get that many but I have a few contacts who still send them (they've not quite caught up with Smartphone era yet..!) and I've found the backup apps I've tried aren't actually that great at backing these up.

I've had a look into it this evening and its actually pretty simple, just for reference in case your interested... the MMS files are stored in /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/app_parts/ with names such as PART_xxxx. These are the actual files just lacking their extension... the details of these are stored in part table of the mmssms.db you mention. If you run a query to select from the _data and ct columns in this table you'll get the file location and the type of file (i.e. image/jpeg) - you could then download the file and put the correct extension back on and away you go.

Ah outstanding! thanks immensely!