Important iMessage Conversation Disappeared

[SunsetMoon]

Hello, my entire iMessage conversation with my wife has disappeared. I cannot lose this conversation. I have tried calling Apple Support to no avail. I use iCloud Backups but it appears that all my messages have been synced with iCloud rather than being included in my iCloud backups. Meaning that when they are gone they are gone.

Does anyone know if O2 will keep a record of our messages? Someone has advised me to check this option.

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

@SunsetMoon 

O2 do not keep any messages at all, sorry, but if you have an iCloud backup you need to restore yoour phone to the latest backup that had those messages and they will be restored to the phone.

[SunsetMoon]

Thanks for letting me know.

I have tried this with two different backups and the messages are gone. Evidentally Apple have rolled out a new option in their iCloud Settings on iPhone IOS. If you select Messages to be turned on in iCloud then these are NOT backed up with your backups. I never knew this and thought I had all my messages backed up. Hopefully data recovery from my phone might be able to get them back then.

[SunsetMoon]

*By turning messges to 'on' in iCloud settings only means that they are synced (not backed up) with the iCloud server.

[MI5]

Oh I see, how annoying!

[jonsie]

I don't think there is any way you will get these messages back unfortunately. If they aren't backed up to the apple servers they are gone forever. Very upsetting for you and I do sympathise with you.