Pictures do not backup inline with messages

[cliff1970]

Expected behaviour

Pictures and texts backup as one timeline.

Actual behaviour

Pictures often backup in separate emails than texts making it difficult to match the context with the picture.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

Just backup texts using new IMAP method. https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/08/21/backup-sms-text-messages-android/

Please specify the following:

• Android version = 10
• Phone model / brand = Pixel XL
• SMS Backup+ version installed = 1.5.11
• Messaging app = Google Messages

[nikkopt]

It was always like this unfortunately. RCS conversations also get seperate "timelines" for each participant.

[kurahaupo]

This would appear to because backing up SMS & MMS messages are separate operations.

Can you check whether an MMS that consist only of text gets backed up in the timeline with other MMS or in the timeline with SMS? (Using a rich-text feature such as "bold" should be enough to trigger this.)

[rootdown1]

I have several MMS that only consist of text and they all get backed up to the "MMS timeline".

[emilyboda]

I have one conversation with the subject "SMS with [my own name]" that contains all RCS text messages I've sent or received with anyone and also all MMS messages that I've sent (but not received).

Here's a summary of what I've found:

• Received RCS messages show up under "SMS with [my own name]" AND "SMS with [actual sender]"
• Sent RCS messages only show up under "SMS with [my own name]"
• Received MMS messages show up only in "SMS with [correct sender]"
• Sent MMS messages show up only in "SMS with [my own name]"

As a result, for my RCS conversations, "SMS with [correct sender]" shows a one-sided conversation with only my received messages and no replies from me. For my regular conversations, in "SMS with [correct sender]" I see all messages, except MMS messages I sent to them. Then I have a random "SMS with [my own name]" that contains snippets of a lot of different conversations.

Is this the same bug as referenced above? Is there any way to fix this? I looked back on my texts from 2017, but there was no RCS back then and I don't remember if I sent pictures in a particular conversation or not.

[nikkopt]

I don't get why i'm having different results compared to last time. I just had a RCS conversation, backed up my massages and they were correctly saved. Ex: Sent and received RCS messages with person X are in the same timeline, even images. However, normal SMS's are still creating new timelines whenever i do a backup. I have lot's of timelines like: me, Mom 4 me, Mom 8 me, Mom 2

Instead of creating a new timeline only when the old gets 100 messages. Sometimes i also get timelines with only sms's i sent. I have no idea why they get split up like that.

EDIT: Although they are shown as SMS's in gmail, when the app is backing them up, it says "MMS's"

[kurahaupo]

@emilyboda thanks for the detailed report, that's very helpful.

[kurahaupo]

@nikkopt Thanks for checking again. I suspect "why changed" might boil down to changes to Android. This will need further investigation.