Get all Text Messages off iPhone
Jailbreak. First, you'll need to jailbreak your iPhone. Make sure you install OpenSSH (here's how) to make your iPhone accessible via SFTP.
SFTP into the phone. Go to the phone's network settings, and view the details of the active connection. Write down the device's IP address. Using your favorite FTP client, SFTP into that IP address using the username root and password alpine.
Download sms.db. Your text message database is located in /var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.db on your iPhone. Download that file to your computer.
Open the SQLite database. That sms.db file is a SQLite database, which you can edit and view using free tools.( http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/files/) Download one of those tools—the SQLite Database Browser—and install it on your computer. Open up the sms.db file, and click on the Browse Data tab. Choose the message table and you'll see your SMS history, and it'll look like this:
Export to CSV. From the SQLite Database Browser's File menu, choose Export > Table to CSV file. Save the resulting comma-delimited file, and open it using your spreadsheet of choice (whether it's Excel or OpenOffice.org).
Now, the big problem with the resulting file is that while it includes the messages themselves, the name of each person who sent each message is not there. (If any database wizards more hip to Apple's DB structure know how to get that info there based on ID's, I'm all ears.) Like I said—proof of concept. On closer inspection, it turns out that the "address" field displays the phone number of the message sender. Given that, you can easily grok who's who (and add names based on that number into your spreadsheet).
SFTP into the phone. Go to the phone's network settings, and view the details of the active connection. Write down the device's IP address. Using your favorite FTP client, SFTP into that IP address using the username root and password alpine.
Download sms.db. Your text message database is located in /var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.db on your iPhone. Download that file to your computer.
Open the SQLite database. That sms.db file is a SQLite database, which you can edit and view using free tools.( http://sourceforge.net/projects/sqlitebrowser/files/) Download one of those tools—the SQLite Database Browser—and install it on your computer. Open up the sms.db file, and click on the Browse Data tab. Choose the message table and you'll see your SMS history, and it'll look like this:
Export to CSV. From the SQLite Database Browser's File menu, choose Export > Table to CSV file. Save the resulting comma-delimited file, and open it using your spreadsheet of choice (whether it's Excel or OpenOffice.org).
Now, the big problem with the resulting file is that while it includes the messages themselves, the name of each person who sent each message is not there. (If any database wizards more hip to Apple's DB structure know how to get that info there based on ID's, I'm all ears.) Like I said—proof of concept. On closer inspection, it turns out that the "address" field displays the phone number of the message sender. Given that, you can easily grok who's who (and add names based on that number into your spreadsheet).