[markw10]

I updated from an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 4S approximately mid-December. I had some voicemails from earlier in 2011 that I had to keep for legal use. I just noticed when I tried to reference them that they are no longer listed on my iPhone. I know I never deleted them and when calling into AT&T for my voicemail I think they are all still there but it's hard to sort through them plus it's hard to play them/record them for someone else. The only thing I can think of is these voicemails were left before I upgraded to the iPhone 4S and I have a lot of voicemails on my iPhone but believe they are all post-iPhone 4S. I don't know why the upgrade caused my iPhone not to display these older voicemails and I may be wrong but I believe that is the cause of this.
Assuming I'm correct with the above, how can I get access on my iPhone to the earlier voicemails before I upgrade to the 4S?
Assuming I can get to these voicemails I have another question. The person I need to send these two wants them in Windows Media format. Is there a way I can do this? Is there an app that would convert voicemails to this format? Assuming I can't do it that way is there a good voice recorder for the Mac that will take this off of my iphone (using it on speakerphone) and record a Windows media file from it?

Thanks for your help.

[jmiddel]

When you bought the 4S, did you sync the 3G to it?

[Spheric Harlot]

Visual Voicemail is stored directly on the phone, physically.

Unfortunately, it does not seem to get transferred between phones even if you restore the new one from the old one's backup. I lost some I would have liked to keep, too, and didn't notice until too late.

You can extract the audio files from the iPhone using tools like PhoneView or iPhone Explorer.

[chabig]

Backups from the 3G are probably still saved on your Mac. In iTunes, look in Preferences > Devices to see if there is a backup of your iPhone 3G. If there is, you should be able to find software on the internet that will let your browse and save the files that are inside the backup. Here is an article that gives some idea of what to do:

Understand the iPhone backup | Macworld

[Cold Warrior]

On Dec 25th or so I restored from a 4 to a 4S and have visual voicemails back to November. I encrypt iPhone backups, which allows for example Mail passwords to be restored without retyping at first check, but I don't know if that also does anything with voicemails.

edit: Have you tried forwarding the voicemails to yourself? http://www.ehow.com/how_6138722_do-f...ice-mail_.html

Maybe they'd show as new/VVM.

[markw10]

Hello,

Thanks for all the tips. When I did a restore from iTunes I had to reenter all email passwords and my voicemail password. I didn't have encryption turned on so seems likely that's what Apple changed with encryption (saving passwords and voicemails). I'm going to turn encryption on for the future to avoid this issue. I just never thought of this happening when I upgraded to a new phone.
I'm going to look at the links I was given to see if I can get to voicemails. I have it backed up so know I can view the backup but again if it didn't restore the voicemails from a backup I have to wonder if the backup even has the voicemails. Does anyone know for sure that the backup has the voicemails?

[chabig]

It might not. Voive messages are not listed as backed up.

iTunes: About iOS backups

[Big Mac]

That's a major oversight. I'm surprised this is the first time I've heard of or thought about this issue. It makes sense, I always assumed voice mail is stored by your carrier, not on your phone itself (but it should transfer over as long as you keep the same plan).

[mkral]

Assuming that both of the phones are AT&T & you still have the 3gs sitting around, you may want to pop your sim card into the 3gs & see if the messages come up. you could then do whatever you needed to do & then put the sim back into the 4.