Export your text and instant messages [webOS 2.0+] 23

This tip is only for devices running webOS 2.0 and higher

While the ability to save your text messages and instant messages as a text file was available in webOS 1.x by using the homebrew Save/Restore app, the way that the data was stored changed in webOS 2.0 and 3.0 and broke this functionality. While you text messages were saved to your profile starting in webOS 2.1 for when you swap phones or perform a webOS doctor, there was no way to export them from your device.  Once again, our ingenious homebrew community has come to the rescue. Mobo Mobile Apps (Garfonso in our forums) has created a nifty little tool simply called Export Messages that is available in Preware or webOS Quick Install that will grab all of the messages in your Messaging app and save them to a text file. You can even specify the name of the file as well as if you only wanted to included SMS messages and exclude IM messages.

Once you install the app, you will also need to install the "Export Messages permission" patch to give the app permission to grab your data. You can also manually run the code from a linux command line if you want to see exactly what permissions you are giving.  Just type in the code below and you should be good to go:

luna-send -a com.palm.app.messaging -n 1 palm://com.palm.db/putPermissions '{"permissions": [{"type": "db.kind", "object": "com.palm.message:1", "caller": "info.mobo.exportmessages.service", "operations": {"read":"allow"}}, {"type": "db.kind", "object": "com.palm.message:1", "caller": "info.mobo.exportmessages.service", "operations": {"read": "allow"}}]}'

Once you run the patch, just open up the app, optionally change the output file name and decide if you want to only export SMS messages. Then press the "Do Export" button and you should see it do all the work. Once completed, you can either find the file in your USB root directory, or you can swipe down from the top-left to bring up the Application dropdown menu and select "Mail Messages" to open up an email with the file attached.  While the file is saved as a .txt file, you can open it up in a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel to get a nicely formatted result.

If you have any requests for issues with the app, you can reach the developer in our sms/mms transfer forum thread.