How do I take the text messages created on my Galaxy Note 8 and store them on my iMac computer?

[Droid the Robot]

Hello.

I’m looking for a way to permanently take all the text messages that I have posted and received on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and permanently save them on my iMac desktop computer (which runs macOS High Sierra, version 10.13)

Beyond that, once on the computer, the messages need to be easy to access and decipher, including the dates & times each message was posted, the person who posted each, etc. In short, I want an archive stored on my iMac of all the messages on my phone, accessible via an interface similar to a messaging app.

This is needed to document some important conversations and just to save some of the more memorable texts with friends, etc.

I would also like to do the same with my call logs and WhatsApp messages.

For some reason, there doesn’t seem to be any straightforward way to achieve this. Or, maybe I just haven’t come across one yet.

From your experience, what would work best?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Try SMS Backup & Restore.

 

[ManiacJoe]

"SMS backup & Restore" would be my recommendation, too.

The data will be in an XML file, easily copied to your computer.
Any text editor will show you the raw XML data.
Seeing the data in a user-friendly way will require a program that understands how to display XML as row-column data. Any spreadsheet app will get the job done, but it will not be pretty.

Since the SMS data contains only the phone numbers of the participants, you may need to separately export your contacts to your computer and somehow match them up with the SMS data.