949      iPhone_iPad_Mac_apple

Message/iChat Restore Process

Haven't found a usable solution to this problem yet, so help is greatly appreciated.

How do you restore all of your iMessage (iChat) conversations after retiring your Mac to an earlier point in time.  Specifically, I used Time Machine to return my iMac  to OS X 10.10.1.  Was at 10.10.3 (beta 2).  When I launch Messages, conversations are present as they were during the TM backup of 10.10.1.  So from this point I wish to return all the documents, photos, music, messages, etc. to the point prior to the system restore (10.10.3 b2).  Everything can be restored by use of TM for the folders, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures.  But I can not get messages to restore.

Used various methods seen on various forums,  i.e. use TM and restore ~/Library/Messages; /com.apple.iChat,  but to no avail..  Tried various combinations of logging out/in of massages; iCloud, restarting the computer,  again with no avail.  I usually end up with all of the list of those that I sent a message to but no messages.

I believe there is some magical, specific order in which to do this successfully.  I haven't found it yet.

HELP!

& Thx

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Restore ichat history after system restore

You can only restore the whole message database, not individual messages or conversations. This procedure will replace the database with an earlier version, so you'll lose all later changes.

Sign out of iMessage and all other IM accounts, if any. Quit Messages. Hold down the option key and select

          Go ▹ Library

from the Finder menu bar. A folder window will open.

Restore the subfolder named "Messages" from a backup that predates the unwanted changes, then log out and log back in.

If you're running OS X 10.9 or later, delete the subfolder Containers/com.apple.iChat.

Thanks for the reply.  I saw this response previously and followed the instructions but to no avail.

Again, I must be missing something.  Your reply did not indicate if there were any other specific things that needed to be done.

Did you delete the sandbox folder in Containers?

I tried:

1) restore ~/Library/Messages

2) restore ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat

and

1) restore ~/Library/Messages

2) Delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat

Maybe I misunderstood your question. If you're trying to restore from a snapshot that was taken while the beta version of OS X was running, I wouldn't expect that to work. There is no reverse migration of system data. The best you can do is to restore the Messages archive to the state it was in as of the last snapshot before you installed the beta. It seems that you've already done that. All later message data is lost.

So, what I think I hear you saying is:  If I take a TM snapshot on "Friday", and then do a System Restore back to "Monday", there is no way to method to pull in the messages from the Friday TM snapshot?

No, that's not what I'm saying. To repeat, you can't expect to restore data that has been migrated to a later version of the OS back to an earlier version.

Ok, got that.

I will try to restore back to 10.10..1 and then update back to 10.10.3 and then try your method.

BTW, only reason to go back to 10.10.1 anyway was to try and recover old iPhoto book project before everything was messed by by the iCloud photo library, which lost some images

thx for your help.  Hope this works

Also Restore ichat history after system restore

8:10 pm      Thursday; March 26, 2015