Help regarding Messaging thread deletion

[NKA91]

Hello, everyone.

I'm new to this forum, I stumbled upon it while researching about the problem I've been encountering, which is: For a long time recently, my sister and I (who both have SIII's), have been getting some horid lag when using the stock messaging app. I've figured out it was because we have a lot of messages because we left the message cap off. I figure we've each got upwards of 20,000 messages atleast. My problem now is trying to delete my one thread with those thousands of messages. I would select delete thread and all that, but the app would freeze and it wouldn't sort itself out unless I rebooted the phone. Even after rebooting it, the thread and all those messages are still there. Is my only option a factory reset?

Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[DroidXcon]

You can try clearing the data from the messaging app itself.
Settings> application manager> messaging> force stopthen clear data. This will clear out all your messages

From my Galaxy Note 2 via Tapatalk

 

[GTWalling]

Also not if there are a lot of messages it could seem like the phone is froze. I have seen it take upwards of 15 minutes to delete a tread with a lot of messages and cause the phone to become unresponsive.