Personal Digital Archiving: Saving Cell Phone Texts

Most of us save letters and email, so – since text is a form of correspondence — it seems natural to save some of our cell-phone text messages too. Saving text is not too difficult, with a little understanding and effort. You simply transfer text (also referred to as Short Message Service or SMS) off the phone and onto a computer or another storage medium. Cell – or mobile – phones can be loosely divided into two types: “basic” and “smart.” On both you can store text either on the phone’s built-in drive or on a detachable SIM card. The format of the text messages – TXT — is one of the simplest of all file formats, so once you transfer your texts you can display them with a basic text editor or even through a browser; many different programs will display text files.