How to Back Up SMS Messages on Your Android Phone

If you are an Android user and need to delete data on your phone, then you know that there are many good options for backing up your phone first. Much of this can be done via the cloud so that content can be easily restored, but backing up your text message inbox requires the use of a third-party tool. There are a lot of different options on Google Play, but the question is which one you should use. Most of the popular ones require access to your Gmail account to automatically create and restore backups, but if you’re unwilling to provide that access, we’ve got a great option you can try that we’ve used ourselves to back up SMS messages on our Android phones.

Here’s everything you need to know about backing up (and restoring) your phone’s text message archives, which can be saved on your device, mailed to yourself, or saved to the cloud. This is useful if you need to reset your phone to factory settings, or if you’re switching to a new phone. We use SMS Backup and Recovery, which was acquired by Carbonite a few years ago. Just follow the steps below to backup text messages on your Android phone.

Create backup of Android phone text messages

To create a backup of all your text messages, you need to first install Carbonite SMS Backup and Restore on your phone. Once completed, follow these steps:

1. On the welcome screen, click Get started.
2. You have to grant access to Files (to save backups), Contacts, SMS (obviously), and Manage Phones (to backup call logs). Keep clicking allow on all four pop-ups.
3. tap Setup backup.
4. switch Telephone If you only want to back up text, turn off. You can also click Advanced options If you want to back up MMS or selected conversations; if you want to back up your entire text archive, leave it alone.
5. tap Next.
6. Now, use the toggle button to select where you want the backup to take place. You can choose Google Drive or Dropbox, but if you don’t want to grant access, you can turn on the switch your phone numberand then copy the file manually.
7. If you agree to the default folder, click OKotherwise click Browse and find the folder where you want to save the backup.
8. When finished, click Nextthen click in the pop-up window Yes.
9. You can set a backup schedule via the switch on the front, or turn off Schedule regular backups switch. Then, click Back up now.

That’s it, the backup will now take place. We have approximately 13,000 messages on our phones and the entire process takes less than three minutes. Once you have the backup file, you can copy it to your computer or manually save it to the cloud without linking your application to third-party software.

Restore Android SMS Backup

Once you’ve created a backup of your Android phone text messages, you can go ahead and reset your phone because you want to try to free up space, or because you’re switching to a new phone. Now that you’ve completed your backup, what’s next? Again, you need to install Carbonite SMS Backup and Restore on your new phone or newly formatted phone. Once done, follow these steps to recover text messages:

1. Make sure the SMS backup is copied to your phone.
2. Launch Carbonite SMS Backup and Restore and click Get started on the welcome screen.
3. Click the hamburger menu icon in the upper left corner, then click recover.
4. Click local backup location If you use a local copy, or choose to use Google Drive or Dropbox, click the appropriate button.
5. It should automatically find the latest backup, but if not, click Choose another backupthen click the file you want to recover. Choose from the switches to decide what content, messages, and calls you want to recover.
6. Click Restore and then OKand Yes Start with the next two pop-ups.

That’s all. The app restores all your messages, so even if you’re switching to a new phone, you can pick up right where you left off. If you’re backing up an existing device, it also checks for duplicates so you don’t flood your inbox with copies. The process is not as fast as backing up messages. Restoring approximately 13,000 messages took approximately five minutes.

Once that’s done, you’re good to go and can uninstall the app if you wish, or if you want to schedule regular backups, that’s an option for you as well. Since the app needs to be the default SMS app for recovering messages, you’ll need to go to the SMS app and open it to make it the default app again, but other than that, you don’t need to do anything else.

Did this tip work for you? Do you have a preferred alternative to backup text messages on Android phone? Let us and other readers know in the comments, and check out the How-To section for other helpful tips.