[Q] Deleting Text Messages Sucks. Solutions? - EVO 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I have about 13k text messages stored on my EVO and need to clear them. Don't really wanna do a reset or NAND restore b/c i'm outta practice and would probably find a way to break something.
anyway, does anyone know where texts are store internally? attempting to delete them via Handcent and HTC messaging app creates FC and kills my phone.
any help is appreciated.
thanks.
hp.

Sms backup and restore in the market will let you delete everything in one shot if that's what your trying to do.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

i know this is a huge bump, there are other similar topics but this was the easiest for me to find.
Looks like the official gingerbread update from sprint lets you delete messages A LOT faster than froyo.
Just put my phone into airplane mode and turned off the screen timeout so i could delete a 500+ message plus conversation. it took like 3 seconds.
THANK YOU HTC.

Related

[Q] Handcent

So ive seen handcent all over the fourm and people talking about how great it is. So i downloaded it and i admit its amazing. The only problem ive run into is that when i get a message is shows up in handcent and the stock text program. How do i disable that so my phone only uses handcent?
In the stock messaging app, you need to go into settings (when it's open hit "menu" and then "settings") and turn off the notifications for receiving a message. Back out of it, and you should be good-to-go. I personally turned off all notifications in the stock app.
JermsMalibu said:
In the stock messaging app, you need to go into settings (when it's open hit "menu" and then "settings") and turn off the notifications for receiving a message. Back out of it, and you should be good-to-go. I personally turned off all notifications in the stock app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Much appreciated I though that there might be a way to totally disable the stock program because they will still pile up in there wont they?
Yea, the messages will still be in the stock one. The way I understand it though, all the messages come into/out of a single spot. The messaging programs (Handcent, the stock one, etc.) just look in that area to let you text. So you can just remove the stock one from being linked on one of your home pages, and then you never have to see it again. There might be a way to remove that program itself, but I don't know it. It doesn't bother me though since I just don't ever open it and instead use Handcent.
You could always uninstall it via adb if you are rooted. Search "how to remove bloatware (or unwanted apps)" or some variant.
JermsMalibu said:
Yea, the messages will still be in the stock one. The way I understand it though, all the messages come into/out of a single spot. The messaging programs (Handcent, the stock one, etc.) just look in that area to let you text. So you can just remove the stock one from being linked on one of your home pages, and then you never have to see it again. There might be a way to remove that program itself, but I don't know it. It doesn't bother me though since I just don't ever open it and instead use Handcent.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just don't delete it! LOL! Trust me! That and don't delete Facebook out off the phone either. Those were BIIIIIGGGG mistakes. LOL! I won't ever do that again. Good thing I do nandroid back ups before I try experimenting with removing stuff.
Anyone having touble with Hancent opening since 2.2? I have at least a 30 second lag when I launch, almost like a memory full issue.
I have the stock notifications off and am not rooted.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
jfk
freeze it thru titanium backup like i did! u can defrost it any time!
I've tried Handcent a few times and it seems OK but has a fatal flaw. My wife and I use txt-to-email and back. She send my a txt on vtxt.com and I reply through my SMS service straight to her email address which pops up on her Blackberry. Handcent won't sent messages to email addresses.

Anyone have Handcent delete all your messages for no reason?

I had a ton of text message threads in Handcent.. Just rebooted my phone like I do all the time. And all of a sudden they were gone! I tried to do a data restore from Titanium but that never seems to work for texts
Not the end of the world.. Just curios as to why it happened..
I have read before that sometimes HC will FC if too many messages are present on a thread, I guess this could be qualified as another side effect for a database that has become way too large for HC to handle.
This just happened to me again. After a manual reboot.. ALL of my text messages are gone. They're gone from the stock messaging app too so I'm not sure where the problem lies. I did a Google search and see other people are having this problem as well with just the stock messaging app. Any ideas on a fix? I'm missing some important text messages.... ugh..
Just noticed my saved wireless networks are gone after the reboot as well....
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
thenags said:
This just happened to me again. After a manual reboot.. ALL of my text messages are gone. They're gone from the stock messaging app too so I'm not sure where the problem lies. I did a Google search and see other people are having this problem as well with just the stock messaging app. Any ideas on a fix? I'm missing some important text messages.... ugh..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't help you with the root cause of the problem - I've never had it happen to me but a couple of friends have (all msgs wiped).
If the messages are missing from Handcent, they will also be missing from the stock app - there's no difference because the messages are (or should be) in the same place and you're just choosing to view/send them with Handcent or the stock app (or another of your choosing).
I CAN, however, help you try to minimize the effects of this happening in the future, as well as keep multiple records of your SMS...
I use two apps, together. The first one, called SMS Backup & Restore, by developer Ritesh Sahu has been a god send for me. You can backup all your messages and restore them, fully - it even gets the conversation threads in the right order by date upon recovery. In addition to manual backups, you can schedule backups.
While backing up is fast, I have to warn you that deleting all current messages (if you have a lot) and restoring them can take time. Restoring them, however, shows you a status bar so you can track its progress while deleting them just says "deleting" and you never know how long it will be. (The same dev also has a sister program for phone call logs - it's lightning fast and just as reliable/effective).
The other app I use is called "SMS Backup" by dev Christoph Studer (if you have trouble finding either of these in the market, look them up by searching for the dev's names). What this app does is work quietly in the background to send / upload your SMS to your Gmail. You can set which label you want to apply to them in Gmail, and then in Gmail set a filter to have them skip right over your inbox. This app also lets you have them appear as read when they are uploaded. All in all, you never even realize it's working and your Gmail will never be the wiser, until you have to refer back to an old SMS - maybe a phone number or address or some other vital info sent to you over text... and you can just go and find it at that time safely recorded in your Gmail.
I hope that helps!
Best of luck. If you're having trouble beyond disappearing texts, you may have other more serious underlying issues...
The problem with the backup apps are obviously I need to run them. Who thinks to do a backup prior to doing nothing more than a reboot?! It's crazy that the phone just deletes them on it's own. Searching on Google shows that this problem is wayyyy too common.
thenags said:
The problem with the backup apps are obviously I need to run them. Who thinks to do a backup prior to doing nothing more than a reboot?! It's crazy that the phone just deletes them on it's own. Searching on Google shows that this problem is wayyyy too common.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
who will do backups on a regular basis? folks that have lost data in the past. the more significant the loss, the better their backup habits.
i do backups. it seems the previous poster does. heck, i bet you start doing backups too.
the more you work with technology the more likely you are to ensure that your important data is at least duplicated. things like pictures, audio, video, text should be considered. this goes for desktops, laptops, netbooks, phones, etc. if it stores data, runs an OS and a users interacts with it...it will fail eventually.
sms backup works quite nicely. i found it after i lost my text messgs once.
I run Titanium every single night by schedule and nandroid every other night. I also have automated backups on all my PC's. But I send and recieve at least 1000 texts a day.. So when my texts randomly delete themselves at 5pm.... A backup made at 2am does me no good for my text messages....
Then modify your backup routine. I your backups won't recover your data...you are using the wrong tool. Sms backup can backup every X hrs.
Trust me..there is always a way to protect data that you find important.
I agree, the app shouldn't erase your data.
you can complain and cry....or...complain and recover.
The choice is solely up to you.
Good luck.
I back up all of my texts to my gmail, makes for great searching!
DraginMagik said:
Then modify your backup routine. I your backups won't recover your data...you are using the wrong tool. Sms backup can backup every X hrs.
Trust me..there is always a way to protect data that you find important.
I agree, the app shouldn't erase your data.
you can complain and cry....or...complain and recover.
The choice is solely up to you.
Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where is the option to backup every X hours? I've been through the settingss several times and don't see it
I've been using Handcent for 1.5 years now with no issue but just saw this with a customer who has the Thunderbolt. All messages are gone and she was not on the latest version which is 3.9 now. I've got 3.82 on my Evo so I'm going to leave it there till I know what's going on with this.

HTC Sense Messages Application??

My wife's EVO is getting really slow when using the stock Sense Messages Application. She has thousands of texts... I've tried everything to try to delete them but the application keeps crashing in the process. I've even gone to the Applications menu item to the Messages Application and cleared data. It told me that all the data would be erased. I went back into the application and they are all still there.
I need to get this thing cleared out... Why is it so difficult? How do I delete them?
I'm thinking my only option is to do a factory data reset. I've searched google and this forum and haven't found any answers but a lot of people with the same problems.
I'm getting scared cause she came from an iPhone and she's starting to regret it.
Mine crashed also, at least it wouldn't let me open pictures.
Just for giggles try downloading handcent from the market and see if it will let you delete the messages.
generalExpert said:
My wife's EVO is getting really slow when using the stock Sense Messages Application. She has thousands of texts... I've tried everything to try to delete them but the application keeps crashing in the process. I've even gone to the Applications menu item to the Messages Application and cleared data. It told me that all the data would be erased. I went back into the application and they are all still there.
I need to get this thing cleared out... Why is it so difficult? How do I delete them?
I'm thinking my only option is to do a factory data reset. I've searched google and this forum and haven't found any answers but a lot of people with the same problems.
I'm getting scared cause she came from an iPhone and she's starting to regret it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try "sms Manager" from the market.. works great on my evo..
OK, I figured it out. There must be a timer that the application uses which alerts to forceclose because the app is not responding. However if I hit "wait" over and over it will eventually delete what I want.
I don't know why it's taking so long to delete a thread of texts... A thread of just 200 texts can take like 5 min to delete.
that is AOSP/Android as a whole is glaringly terrible. IOS and even my BB curve could delete months of texts extremely faster with terrible os and hardware
generalExpert said:
OK, I figured it out. There must be a timer that the application uses which alerts to forceclose because the app is not responding. However if I hit "wait" over and over it will eventually delete what I want.
I don't know why it's taking so long to delete a thread of texts... A thread of just 200 texts can take like 5 min to delete.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
xlGmanlx said:
that is AOSP/Android as a whole is glaringly terrible. IOS and even my BB curve could delete months of texts extremely faster with terrible os and hardware
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would definitely disagree with android being "terrible". This problem could be directly related to htc sense/messaging app, or who knows what. I highly doubt this is related to the OS itself. I guess I could be wrong though.
try it on any AOSP rom, pretty sure its a function of the OS, could be wrong
generalExpert said:
I would definitely disagree with android being "terrible". This problem could be directly related to htc sense/messaging app, or who knows what. I highly doubt this is related to the OS itself. I guess I could be wrong though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same issue on my evo, but if I just wait it out it eventually deletes them. My friend has a hero and it took him 4 hours to delete several thousand texts...I'm curious why it takes so long.
Also I was terribly annoyed by how laggy the stock messaging was, so I tried handcent, and that was just as laggy. Then I tried chompsms and it runs a bit faster. Plus it's customizable so you can make it look however you want it to
If her phone is rooted you can use this option.
The fastest way to delete messages granted this will delete every message you have but it works.
use root explorer or
es file explorer and in the setting go to root options and have root explorer checked. ( you need to have a rooted phone to do this.
go to the root of the phone you will have many folders called data, sys, system, etc.
navigate to
data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
in that folder you will see a
mmssms.db
this has MMS and SMS. now you can delete it or move it to the SD Card just make it so its not in that directory any more.
Now reboot the phone and every text and pic mail will be gone as if you deleted it.
Hope this can help some of you.
On another note this can also be away for you to restore all your messages. just take the old mmssms.db file and replace it and reboot the phone and all your texts will be restored.
Reason why it take so long is because it has to rewrite a database when each text is deleted so lets say you have 3 texts this is what it will do.
delete the first text
write a new database
delete next text
write a new database
delete last text
write a new database
it does that to every text.
hope this helps someone if not you all.
enjoy.
DC13
WOW. Thank you for all that information. Completely makes sense.
dc13 said:
If her phone is rooted you can use this option.
The fastest way to delete messages granted this will delete every message you have but it works.
use root explorer or
es file explorer and in the setting go to root options and have root explorer checked. ( you need to have a rooted phone to do this.
go to the root of the phone you will have many folders called data, sys, system, etc.
navigate to
data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I know you said to use those two apps but I tried to look in that data folder with Astro and there was nothing inside...
Does Astro not work for this?
No astro does not. ill pm you when i get home of a app that works sorry it wont be sooner.

Too many SMS now messages won't work!

Hi all,
Having looked around I don't see anyone with the same issue as mine with regards to SMS.
I just got a new Nexus 2 days ago, and got the 4.0.4 update by doing the clear cache thing. All good.
I installed SMSBackup+ and started to restore all my text messages. Now I have about 21,000. Honestly I have no idea how I have that many, its possible some are dupes or something, I really don't know. But basically I left it to restore them overnight and woke up this morning with all my messages restored. Lovely.
But now, I tried to send a text to someone and it just froze. I quit to the home screen, went to go back to the message app but it just sits with a black screen doing nothing.
I presume its got something to do with it trying to load all the messages for the first time or something like that but I'm a bit gutted that it can't handle it. My old Galaxy S could handle them all with ease.
Is this a known issue on the GNex or am I asking too much with the volume of SMSs??
I'm a bit gutted if I've bought this brand new state of the art phone and it can't handle what my two year old SGS could!
It might have been the case that a couple of messages were corrupt. Try clearing the sms data and restoring again but only blocks at a time. If that doesn't work the messaging app might have an issue since your now running ics.
This could be an issue that hasn't been explored as your not the average user. I for 1 limit my messages at 200 a contact.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Thanks RT, but its so slow/congested it won't let me delete them either! I tried by going into the message app and choosing delete threads.
It loads every time I reboot the phone but if I do anything on it at all, it just shows me a black screen.
On first load I can see all the messages, but if I go into one of them, even one that is only 2 threads long, it just freezes on me.
Any idea how I can delete the SMS data without going through the message app?
Or am I staring down the barrel at a factory reset? (this isn't the end of the world as I only got the phone yesterday and haven't really installed anything yet)
Right then,
So instead of trying to do something with the stock message app to delete the sms messages, I downloaded delete old messages app and ran that before loading up the stock message software.
I think the next time I restore them I will try and put the 200 cap on them like my SGS did (I thought this was a limitation of the phone not an actual setting that I could adjust! I presume I'll find it in the stock SMS settings somewhere?)
Thanks for the help RT.
I've had that issue since froyo. anytime I restore thousands of texts, the messaging app just hangs. On the rare occasion it'll come to life but for the most part unusable. only solution seems to be to restore a small portion of your texts or have a blank slate
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Quit being so popular. Too many SMS.
I made a second label in my GMail I call SMS Backup and every few weeks I'll change my backed-up messages from SMS to the Backup label so when/if I wipe and restore, it doesn't pull in all my messages. If I need anything, I can easily search for it.
wheelerruss said:
Right then,
So instead of trying to do something with the stock message app to delete the sms messages, I downloaded delete old messages app and ran that before loading up the stock message software.
I think the next time I restore them I will try and put the 200 cap on them like my SGS did (I thought this was a limitation of the phone not an actual setting that I could adjust! I presume I'll find it in the stock SMS settings somewhere?)
Thanks for the help RT.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To delete your messages / settings go into the sms app under Settings-Apps and clear all your data.
Yes you find the sms limit setting in the general setting within the sms app.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

[Q] sms send failing

I am getting errors with my sms texts on my phone. I am able to receive them just fine, however I can not send them. I am running Blazer Rom v4.1 with Rogue Hitman 1.5 kernel. I have already tried fixing permissions as well as updating the PRL and profile. None of that helped. Any help is appreciated. P.S. Everything else on my phone is working just fine including making and receiving phone calls.
Is it text msgs or pic and vid msgs you're having trouble with? Try going to /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases and delete telephony.db. Reset your phone and let me know if that works.
It is the texts themselves I cannot send, although I haven't tried pic or video. I just deleted telephony.db. Lets hope this works =].
Nothing has changed since I deleted the file. I still get the same error message saying that my text is still sending, but it never goes through.
You may consider reflashing.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA
I was thinking of that, but I dont feel like setting everything up a
gain lol.
Then do a nandroid backup. After you flash, get appextractor from the market. I bought the key for it too. It will recover all you apps and the data. Its well worth the couple bucks.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA
I fixed the problem. I ended up reinstalling the rom and now it works fine. Thank you for helping.
MeWarning said:
Is it text msgs or pic and vid msgs you're having trouble with? Try going to /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases and delete telephony.db. Reset your phone and let me know if that works.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks MeWarning. I had been searching around for a solution for my phone and came across your post. There aren't a lot of things out there that mention failed texts. My stock Epic Touch would not send any text messages while roaming. I spent an hour on the phone with Sprint, the level 2 tech guy told me to put the phone in Sprint only mode, no help there. I did a factory reset, didn't fix it. So, I rooted the phone and tried deleting the telephony file and all is working now. My boss was having the same issue and that solution fixed his as well.

Categories

Resources