Unable to locate attachment issue

[roshansridhar]

I have many old messages on iMessage where the attachments haven’t been downloaded. When I export and check the HTML threads, some images are missing, and I often see "Unable to locate attachment:" in their place. How can I retrieve all the old attachments without having to take hours to go thru every conversation and manually select every photo.?

[ReagentX]

In the Messages app, if you click the info button for a conversation and scroll down, there is a button to force it to download all of the attachments for that conversation:

[ReagentX]

If you double-click a conversation in the list view it will open it in a new window.

[mpk99]

Yeah i got it somewhat sort of working. Now my next issue, after i get about a few good 100 pgup clicks, it reverts back to the bottom of the chat 🤦 fml

[HolisticDeveloper]

I take it that the Download link something in the MacOS Messages app -- I don't see anything similar on the iPhone.

[ReagentX]

Here is a screenshot of how it looks in my
iPhone, at the bottom of the conversation information view that opens when you tap the contact's name at the top of the screen:

If all the images have already been downloaded, the button may not appear.

[HolisticDeveloper]

Here is a screenshot of how it looks in my iPhone

I think I just have this option turned off. (Under Settings > Apple Account > iCloud > Saved to iCloud, Messages is "Off.")

In my first run with imessage-exporter, I had many occurrences of missing attachments. Searching led me here, so I thought it was an issue with offloading to iCloud. I guess I had forgotten I didn't have the setting enabled on the iPhone. (It's the only Apple device I own so I probably didn't see a good reason to enable it.)

After reviewing the old message thread on my phone and taking a new backup, imessage-exporter was able to find them. Not sure why that would be. I'll keep experimenting to see what I can figure out.

[roshansridhar]

Thank you so much! Is there a way to avoid doing this for each conversation individually? I noticed there might be an option in your tool to passing it as a parameter external db or attachment folders. Would obtaining this using third-party apps be a viable solution?

[ReagentX]

I don't know of any third party apps that can force a synchronization with iCloud.

[Meatwad650]

Forcing download fixed the issue for me, but oddly I was able to find the attachments before that and they were the right attachments.