Transferring Windows Phone texts/SMS to Android

[Whosaninja]

Hi
Does anyone know if it is possible to transfer my texts from my Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 to my Samsung Galaxy S5? Contacts have been done and hoping to just drag and drop pictures but stumped on texts.

If anyone can help that would be greatly appreciated

Cheers
Whosaninja

 

[Whosaninja]

It would seem transferring pictures was not easy either. Having to use bluetooth to transfer onto the phone and then move them to the card

I thought Android was a lot more open than it clearly is.

 

[Vsweety]

It would seem transferring pictures was not easy either. Having to use bluetooth to transfer onto the phone and then move them to the card

I thought Android was a lot more open than it clearly is.

You could also have chosen file transfer via USB cable, via Micro SD card reader, via RDM, via Airdroid, via SonicShare, etc. etc.
Open enough?

 

[Whosaninja]

I was using a USB cable but the phone was not letting me "drag and drop" on the computer. Am I missing something?

 

[Rukbat]

Connect the Nokia to the computer. Drag all the pictures to the computer. Unplug the Nokia. Plug the Android into the computer. Drag the pictures to the phone, to a folder you created with the computer.

If you tried to put the pictures in a folder created by an app on the phone, you can't do that too easily starting with Android 4.4.2.

As far as texts, you'll have to find a text backup program for the Nokia that saves in the same format as one you find for the S5. (Many of them use xml files, which are text, so even if the format is a little different, you can manually "massage" the file to import it into the S5.)

 

[Nick_1020]

Don't suppose there's any progress on this please?

Just switched to Android from WP and after hours of searching, I'm unable to find any way to export my 1020 messages so they can be imported to my Z3.

 

[Rukbat]

Is there an "export" or "save" or "backup" choice or app for texts for the Nokia? If there is, you can probably manipulate the resultant file to be importable to an Android phone. (It's not a difficult app to write, I just don't think anyone's done it. It's like an orphan disease - there's not a huge market.)

 

[Nick_1020]

Is there an "export" or "save" or "backup" choice or app for texts for the Nokia? If there is, you can probably manipulate the resultant file to be importable to an Android phone. (It's not a difficult app to write, I just don't think anyone's done it. It's like an orphan disease - there's not a huge market.)

AFAIK, there's no such app. SMS data does get backed up, but to OneDrive and the files are not even readable, let alone able to be manipulated.

It's a hell of a shame if nothing can be done.

 

[Rukbat]

Are you sure they're not xml files? That's kind of a standard. (Not that anyone follows standards.) What's the file extension? (I spent years converting data from one format to another, so I might be able to figure something out if I know the file type, or can get a copy of a file.)

 

[Nick_1020]

Are you sure they're not xml files? That's kind of a standard. (Not that anyone follows standards.) What's the file extension? (I spent years converting data from one format to another, so I might be able to figure something out if I know the file type, or can get a copy of a file.)

No idea what kind of files they are as it's not possible to access them...perhaps I should've been a little clearer as saying that they couldn't be read suggests that I can at least see them.

I've contacted Lumia and Xperia support and neither could help. I tried the Xperia Transfer data app but unfortunately for WP devices, SMS data is not supported. Can be done on other platforms and it's also possible to transfer this data into WP, it's just that MS haven't made it possible to do it the other way. Nokia made it possible to do it on Symbian...MS have really missed a trick here.

Anyway...thanks for the help

 

[Henry Domingo Jr]

There's a new app in Windows 8.1 called 'contacts+SMS backup' I think. It exports contacts to VC format and messages to '.MSG' format. The latter is an Outlook format for emails. I've been searching in playstore for apps that can open 'MSG' files. As of now, I can only find Document Viewer which isn't free. Perhaps there's another way of importing MSG fiels to android as messages.

By the way, I'm transferring from Lumia 1520 to Galaxy S6.

 

[hotphil]

Thanks for the tip!
Sadly, the device I'm going from has no SD card, so that app won't export.
I'm not too attached to my SMS, which is probably good thing!

 

[Windyo]

I DID IT!!!

Just finished transfering my 38000 messages to android. What a day to be alive ! IT WORKS WITH NO SD CARD, E.G. LUMIA 930

It's time-consuming but pretty simple:

PHASE 1 : GET A BACKUP
1/ Get "contacts+SMS backup"
1.5/ Ignore the fact you don't have an SD card. Get it.
2/ Open it under "Settings"
3/ Click the three points at the bottom right of the screen
4/ Select Settings > on my phone, and put your backup somewhere on your phone.
5/ Connect your lumia to your computer and get your backup.


PHASE 2 : CONVERSION, Part 1
1/ Download the TRIAL version of coolutils.com/TotalMailConverterTOTAL MAIL CONVERTER[/URL]
2/ Convert your .MSG file into a .Txt file. Copy original timestamps, get all the info, include headers.
3/ your .txt file is generated
4/ Open it to find out it's actually an xml file
5/ yay.

PHASE 3 : CONVERSION, Part 2
1/ Open that .txt/xml file with Sublime Text (especially if you have a lot of data)
2/ remove the xlmns header. Trust me on this.
3/ Replace all the self-closing tags into open/close pairs, taking care not to corrupt your data...
4/ Save.

PHASE 4 : We Excel at this
1/ Open Excel
2/ Data > Get External Data > From Other Sources > XML
3/ Import that file. Excel will auto-generate the missing header from before.
4/ You have a magnificient table.

PHASE 5 : Bored yet ?
1/ Use this s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=43567415205944439186 template[/URL] to convert it to an xml format that can be read by your phone.
NOTE : this is a template, not a macro. You WILL have some manual work to do.
2/ Copy that last column into a text file with sublime text
3/ add header and footer :
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes' ?>
<!--File Created By SMS Backup & Restore v7.42 on 10/07/2015 09:53:08-->
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="sms.xsl"?>
<smses count="YOURNMBEROFSMS">




</smses>


PHASE 6 : Finally...
1/ Replace all in sublime text :
body=' BY body="
toa= BY " toa=
1.5/ SAVE
2/ DOWNLOAD SMS BACKUP +RESTORE from the play store. The one with the blue icon, not the one that looks like a file manager.
3/ Put your new xml file on your phone
3/ Press "RESTORE" and navigate to the file
4/ wait a lot.
5/ Done.



NOTES :
Dates can be hard to get right
This process is LONG
At least you got your messages
I couldn't post links so I removed the leading part of the url
That's all folks.

 

[PetitRenard]

The 6 phases worked!
Thank you so MUCH!

 

[John Gay1]

I found a very simple two step process to move SMS from Windows Phone 8.1 to Android.
Use the Transfer My Data app on the WinPhone 8.1 phone - on my gf's phone it is in the main app window (I think it was part of the 8.1 upgrade). Touch the 3 dots (...), select "export to SD Card". Let it find all your Contacts, SMS and MMS messages. Select all. Select Start.
After it has exported your data move the SD card to your Android device.
On Android get the VMG Converter from Animated Oak Entertainment. Free version converts 200, $1.99 version converts at least 10,000 (I had 10,060). Let it find the vmsg file from the WinPhone8.1. Select all (or whichever ones you want). Start and wait. It took about 10 minutes to import the 10k I had.

I imported the contacts first.

(This only took about 20 minutes total - after several hours of web searching)

 

[Andy_Naul]

Hi Windyo,

Thanks a lot for sharing this method! I just needed some clarification on this step from Phase 3 : "Replace all the self-closing tags into open/close pairs, taking care not to corrupt your data..."

I'm not too tech savvy, can you please dumb this down for me? Also I've read through the whole thread and the last phase looks a bit tricky...

I'll be really grateful for your help! Thanks again

 

[John Gay1]

I think he means take an xml tag like:
<phone-number>5551234567</>
and add the end-tag:
<phone-number>5551234567</phone-number>

but instead of editing all your data why not try my simple solution:
Export using Transfer My Data app - this creates a .vmsg file.
Transfer My Data->...(3 dots)->Export to SD Card
Import using VMG Converter.

When I did it I checked it with 199 texts just to make sure it worked before buying the $1.99 app.
Or if you don't want to buy it you can import 200 texts at a time. I figured for my case it was worth $2 instead of editing the exported file into 50 smaller files.

 

[Andy_Naul]

Hey John,

Yeah I've just decided to go along with your method!

Thanks for sharing, I'll check out the app before I actually pay for it just to see if it works

 

[Nesdam1981]

Export option does not show on my transfer app. There is an app win windows store called contacts + messages backup but it's not backed up in xml format as the description says. It's backed up in .msg and .hsh format. Don't know if this helps.

 

[John Gay1]

Hey John,

Yeah I've just decided to go along with your method!

Thanks for sharing, I'll check out the app before I actually pay for it just to see if it works

Let us know if it works as well for you as it did for me.