Downloading copies of instant messages

Systems for sending instant messages - e.g. SMS text messages - may not have any facility to download individual messages (unlike, for example, email messages which can each be downloaded as individual EML files) but you can scroll to a message on your phone screen and take a screenshot. 

The method used to take a screenshot on a device depends on what model it is but on iPhones it is usually pressing the home button and power button at the same time. On Android devices it is often pressing the volume down button and power button at the same time. The screenshot takes a JPG or PNG image of what the phone's screen is displaying at the time. You can capture more than one screen's worth of text by, when taking the screenshot, pressing the "scroll down" button.

Note that if a particular text message is quite long, the messaging app you are using might initially just display the first 10 lines, for example, followed by ...Read More. In this case, of course, you need to tap on "Read more" so that the entire message is displayed before doing a screenshot.

If you are capturing more than about 5 or 6 landscape screen's worth of messages (less if captured in portrait) the type will become too small to easily read if fitted into a single A4 page so you then need to convert the JPG or PNG file to a multi-page PDF. To do this, send the image file to a computer, open the image file with a PDF program (such as PDF X-Change Editor) and "print it" to a multi-page PDF specifying the Tile All Pages option with an Overlap of, say, 1 cm.  Specify a Page Zoom sufficiently high so that most of the width of A4 is used.  Specify a filename which includes the date and time of the first and last message the PDF contains e.g. Messages between Smith and Jones 13 Jun 2023 13.51 to 18.41 

It is important that the text of the messages is sufficiently large to be clearly read, but not enormous, so you may need to experiment to get it right. If you turn your phone to the horizontal position before taking the screenshot you will end up specifying a lower Page Zoom to fit it to the width of A4 and so the text characters will be smaller, for example. 

Some messaging apps show the time and date on the first message of each day but for subsequent messages, later on in the day, only show the time. In this case you might need to capture the first message of the day, even if it is not itself relevant, in order to be able to demonstrate the date of those messages which show only the time. 

Some messaging apps display the date of recent messages as "Today", "Yesterday", "Tuesday", "Monday", etc. and only display the full date for messages over 7 days old. In this case, if you want to capture messages less than a week old, you would need to wait until they are over a week old in order to capture the full date.

Load the PDF by tapping the Add Documents button.

Disclaimer

This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.

The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.

This page was lasted updated in June 2026. Disclaimer