How to Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number

by Sophie Green Updated on 2021-07-21 / Update for Android Recovery

Have you recently changed your phone? Are you unable to view some of the old messages that you had on your old phone? This article can help you out! When you switch over to a new phone, you would want all the data that you had stored on your old phone to be available on your new phone.

Thanks to the new technical developments in both iPhones as well as Android phones, this has become a fairly easy and hassle-free process. However, at times you may find that some of the messages from your old phone are still not visible on your new phone. You can take the help of the solutions listed below to know how to retrieve text messages from old phone number.

Method 1. Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number Through Mobile Carriers
Method 2. Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number from Backup
Method 3. How to Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number without Backup

Method 1. Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number Through Mobile Carriers

Many cell phone carriers generally store all the information shared and stored on your device like the text messages, call logs, and other data. You can call the customer care of your mobile carrier and ask them if they can help you in any way to retrieve the messages from your old phone.

Method 2. Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number from Backup

Another way to retrieve the messages from the old phone is by accessing the backup. You can do this in more than one way, as explained below.

1. From Google Backup (for Android)

Although you can access the Google backup of your text messages from the old phone, you cannot restore it directly. For this, you will have to perform a factory reset, and after that, your device will restore all the backup data from Google.

You can perform a factory reset in the following way.

From “Settings” go to “System” and select “Reset Options”.
Tap on “Erase all data”, select “Reset Phone” and confirm the process.

However, performing a factory reset is pretty risky as you may lose some other important data stored on your phone. This is why this method should be used only as a last resort. Here we recommend Tenorshare UltData for Android. Its powerful “Recover Data from Google Drive” feature enables you to selectively restore messages from Google drive backup without factory resetting your device.

Download and install UltData for Android. Run this software and select the feature "Recover Google Drive Data".
Sign in to your Google account and them select the data type you would like to recover. Here we choose Messages and click Start to scanning data.
After scanning, preview and select the messages you need to restore them to your computer.

2. From iTunes Backup (for iPhone)

If you have an iPhone, you can restore the old text messages from iTunes backup. All Apple devices come with iTunes which is a feature that has multiple uses. Creating backup and restoring them is one of the prime uses of this feature provided by Appe. You can know how to receive texts from old number using iTunes in the following way.

Connect your iPhone to your computer and launch iTunes.
Click on your phone at the top of the screen and click on “Summary”.
Click on “Restore Backup”.

All your old text messages will get restored to your new phone.

3. From iCloud Backup (for iPhone)

Backup of your iPhone data has been made a lot easier with iCloud. However, restoring from iCloud backup is not as easy as you may think. However, it is possible to retrieve the old text messages through iCloud backup in the following way.

From “Settings”, tap on “General”, and select “Reset”.
Select “Erase All Content and Settings” and tap on “Erase Now”.
Once your phone restarts after factory reset, from “Apps & Data”, select “Restore from iCloud Backup”.

You will have to sign in after which the old text messages would be restored along with the other data.

Method 3. How to Retrieve Text Messages from Old Phone Number without Backup

Since your Text Messages are not overwritten by new data, you still have a chance to recover them using a professional data recovery software like Tenorshare UltData for Android. This is an excellent software that provides a complete solution for restoring the old text messages on your phone.

This software has the capability to scan more than 1000 deleted text messages and other files in just a few seconds. This software has a very high recovery rate and is therefore the best solution when it comes to retrieving old text messages. You can use the steps given below to restore old text messages on your phone using Tenorshare UltData.

Install and launch the program on your computer and select “Recover Lost Data” from the main interface.
Connect your phone to the computer using a USB cable. Follow the onscreen instructions to enable USB debugging.
Select “Messages” and click on “Start”.
Preview the files, select the ones you wish to recover, and click on “Recover”.

After this, the old text messages would get restored to your Android device. If you have an iOS device, you can use the iOS version of Tenorshare UltData to retrieve the old text messages.

Summary

Wondering about how to receive text from your old number? Even if there are plenty of other ways in which you can get the old text messages back, the easiest and the quickest way is by using UltData for Android. Due to the effectiveness of data recovery by this software, it is highly recommended.