Deleting HUGE SMS threads

[unixpsycho]

Anyone know of a way to delete a 4000+ msg SMS thread?

My poor Hero seems to keep making the SMS app disappear after an hour of waiting.

 

[quic]

best way to take care of this is to honestly just download handcent or chomp sms. although you may not want to use them and stick with the default app they do a much better job at deleting large amounts of messages. i had 2500 messages that would cause my messaging app to force close on my eris. But after downloading handcent it deleted them in less than a minute.. i no longer use handcent and i use chomp and that deletes about the same amount in the same amount of time...

it's worth a try. and their both free.

 

[unixpsycho]

best way to take care of this is to honestly just download handcent or chomp sms. although you may not want to use them and stick with the default app they do a much better job at deleting large amounts of messages. i had 2500 messages that would cause my messaging app to force close on my eris. But after downloading handcent it deleted them in less than a minute.. i no longer use handcent and i use chomp and that deletes about the same amount in the same amount of time...

it's worth a try. and their both free.

i *am* trying it with Handcent SMS. handcent just hangs then after an hour just disappears. the stock app runs for hours then eventually disappears.

i'll try chomp...

 

[Ginbill]

have you restarted your phone lately? if not, do so and then try to delete from handcent or chomp again.

 

[yozhik83]

Try an app called 'Sms Quick Delete'. It does hang a little bit, but not as long and it actually gets the job done rather than hanging for no reason. Start with the smaller threads first, if you have any, then move to the larger ones. ...Oh, and let us all know if that works for you. Thanks!

 

[unixpsycho]

I have restarted a bunch of times... still hangs.

Chomp laughed at me just now.

I'm going to try SMS quick Delete... Soon as I can make people stop texting me for a while.

update shortly...

 

[Deleted member 5726]

I'll have to try this, as I have a couple text threads with 2000+ texts in them (and before someone asks why, I'm deaf. I text and email, since calling doesn't work)

Thanks for starting this thread, I was worried about what would eventually happen

 

[Droid_Moment]

uh have you tried going - Menu- Delete All Threads? lol

I don't know why you need an app to use sms

 

[unixpsycho]

well... I had to use SMS Quick Delete and it took ~4 hours to delete a thread with ~4000 messages. unacceptable.

Chomp and Handcent kept Force Closing or disappearing. Looks like I will never let my thread count get so high ever again.

Wish this was automated within the app.

 

[Cory Streater]

There's a new app in the Market called "Delete old messages", that can delete messages older than a specific time period. Maybe you can use that instead of deleting all of them at once.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

If your phone is rooted, try deleting

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

then reboot. Backup first of course. Sorry I didn't catch this the first time around or I'd have suggested earlier.

 

[unixpsycho]

Where were you when I needed you gbhil? I could have used that command instead of fighting through FC's all night.

I'll try out that "Delete old messages" app for ongoing hard core texting cleanup. I dont want *that* to happen again.

 

[Cory Streater]

I'll try out that "Delete old messages" app for ongoing hard core texting cleanup. I dont want *that* to happen again.

Let us know how it goes please

 

[unixpsycho]

I tried out the "Delete Old Messages" app and it worked as described. Much easier than doing it manually and didnt FC considering I had alot of old threads varying from 50-200 msgs each. My phone is back to being normal while texting. The lag was unbearable!

I might inquire to the Handcent developers to make this a feature in their app so we dont have to spend time managing it ourselves.

Thanx for all the responses!

 

[Cory Streater]

Thanks unixpsycho. That's great feedback.

 

[intoxxx]

If you're rooted, you can always use Fresh's pre-kitchen.

It does it automatically and also backs up previous ones.

 

[Lestah_613]

what does rooted mean?

 

[farnese2988]

Such a hastle!

I have been struggling with deleting my texts messages. I attempted to root my phone however it seems as if I don't understand it fully. I got to the point where I turn on my phone using the home key and the power button, however I am not sure where to go from there.

I really feel they should add a feature to automatically delete old texts. Considering how much they can really lag up your phone. I downloaded the delete old text app and so far its been running for 15 minutes and its at 5% lol. So what does everyone recommend. Rooting? Which seems complex? Or different method?

Thanks in advance

 

[Super27#CB]

The first time you run the Delete Old Texts app it will likely take a long time if you've got a lot of texts built up. Personally, I just put mine on the charger at work the first time, and just let it run. Then, i make it a point to just go in every morning and delete everything older than a week. Never takes more than a minute now. Would be a lot nicer if it did it automatically, but it certainly saved me the trouble of rooting.

 

[Druckles]

I had a 3700 message thread on my HTC Hero which had been building up since January. The response from the messages app was awful, and I finally decided to do something about it.

I used SMS Backup by Christoph Studer to backup all my messages to Gmail automatically. It does it in batches of 200, and it kept on stopping part-way through some batches, but with a little babysitting, I managed to get them all under a label 'SMS'.

I then tried to delete the thread using the messages app, but it completely choked and locked up. In the end, I tried downloading SMS Backup & Restore (a different app to above), which claimed it could delete all my messages. Unfortunately, that didn't look like it was doing much. Left for long enough, it may have eaten through, but there was no progress bar, and it stopped deleting every time I tried to hide the app.

I don't have a rooted phone, but after several restarts of my phone and both my messaging app and Backup & Restore, I decided to download Delete old messages. That stalled at the 'finding messages' and wouldn't go any further, but I restarted the phone, killed the Messages app, and it started working. I set it to delete all messages over 2 months old and left it running overnight, and it worked! I'm currently deleting another 1200 messages from the past month, and it's about 85% of the way through.

It's slow work, but it should do the job in the end. It's certainly better than trying to delete the thread through the default Messages app. I know the thread's quite old, but I thought I'd clear some stuff up for anyone else still suffering from gigantic threads.

Edit: I just deleted the last week's worth of texts, about 500, directly from the Messages app. Didn't do it at first, but I noticed the thread had gone when I looked back a couple of minutes later. This is in contrast to the 1500 it choked on before I ran Delete old messages again.