How can I merge two text message threads together?

[Android Central Question]

My son got a new phone & new number.

I have a long thread of text messages to/from his old number, I thought when I added his NEW number to his contact record in my phone (Samsung Galaxy S9+) & deleted his OLD number, I would still see the same thread of messages just with his new phone number - but not so. My phone has started a NEW thread with his NEW number... so now I have this other thread from his old number with hundreds of text messages in it. Surely there is a way to merge this old text thread with the new one started with his new phone number?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[SpookDroid]

Unfortunately you can't. The text information includes the phone NUMBER, not contact information (the carrier doesn't have that). So, when you got the texts from the new number, even if you updated your contact, the texts are still coming from a different number. So, different threads. The only thing you change when updating the contact is which thread shows your son's contact info rather than just the number.

 

[Scott Wiebe]

Unfortunately you can't. The text information includes the phone NUMBER, not contact information (the carrier doesn't have that.

Yes, but that shouldn't stop you from being able to merge all of the old text messages into the thread of the new number. That is just a huge design flaw by (Samsung in my case).

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! You can always send feedback to Samsung or Google about this, but it is likely a limitation of SMS/MMS (which are extremely old protocols, and likely won't have much flexibility for this kind of thing).