Export iPhone Messages to XML

I had the need to get all iPhone messages into an XML file.

• • Create a local backup on your windows computer using iTunes.
  • Search for the most recent SMS Database in a Powershell Window:

    Get-ChildItem "$env:APPDATA\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" -Recurse | ?{$_.Name -eq '3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28'} | FL FullName, LastWriteTime

Since I already had a lot of SMS exported to an XML with Android’s ‘SMS Backup and Restore‘, I wanted the iPhone messages in the same format. Additionally Excel can import XML Tables and format them very nicely!

So I put together a PHP file, that takes the SQLite DB from the iTunes Backup and exports the XML file as I needed it:

iPhone_to_XML.php