How to Export iPhone Text Messages as a PDF Document
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Do you need to save your iPhone text messages as a PDF document and print out the messages on your PC or Mac? Today we're going to show you the quick steps on how to accomplish that task.
Saving and printing text messages as a PDF is helpful for a wide variety of circumstances including for business, court or trial, preserving family memories, monitoring of a teen or child's texts, real estate transactions, or even just personal archiving of text messages between friends and loved ones. Let's get started:
Necessary items
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Windows or Mac computer
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iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch - You need to be able to back up your iOS device on your computer via iTunes. Note: If you are on a Mac that is running macOS Ventura, Monterey, Catalina, or Big Sur, iTunes is no longer needed. You can simply back up your iPhone via the Finder.
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Decipher TextMessage - The widely used software program runs on your computer and will read in all your text messages and photo attachments and enable you save and print text messages as a PDF file!
Download Decipher Text Message
How to save text messages as a PDF
Specific steps to export and save iPhone text messages as a PDF document:
- Back up the iPhone on your computer.
- Launch Decipher TextMessage.
- Pick a contact whose text messages you want to save as a PDF.
- Select Export Current Conversation as PDF.
- Save the PDF of the text messages to your computer.
- Open the PDF, choose Print to print out iPhone text messages and iMessages.
Below is a screenshot of what a PDF of text messages looks like after they are exported and saved.
Note that the contact information and time/date stamp is on every single text message! This is a unique feature of Decipher TextMessage. This is helpful for documentation purposes or for court or legal reasons where you need to ensure it is clearly presented and visible who sent and received every specific text message.
The exported PDF will also include any photo attachments inline with the messages just as they appear on the iPhone or iPad itself. If needed, you can also export a separate folder containing just the photo and video attachments.
Save text messages as a PDF for a specific date range or time period
If you have a large amount of text messages from a specific contact but only want to save messages from certain dates, you can easily narrow down the SMS messages that you PDF and print by selecting the "Export via PDF with date range" option. This will let you specify the exact date range of the text messages that you need to capture and save.
In addition to being able to print the PDF of all your text messages, keep in mind that you also have the ability to email the PDF to colleagues or friends as well as save the PDF document to an external hard drive or cloud storage option of your choice.
Save iPhone text messages as a PDF - Video Instructions
Our step-by-step YouTube video will walk you through how to export and print your iPhone text messages as a PDF on your PC or Mac computer. Feel free to watch and follow along!
That covers it for today's overview and quick steps on how to save your iPhone text messages as a PDF so you can print out all your important text messages and iMessages.
If you have any questions or need help simply drop us a support email and we'll be happy to reply! We're a USA based software company with offices in San Francisco and Phoenix.