TxtArchive Important Information

Thank you for purchasing or considering ZillCE's TxtArchive SMS Backup tool. This is the place to come for important information concerning TxtArchive. We will continue to update this page as needed.

TxtArchive 2.2.1

06/12/2011:07:00pm - New version of TxtArchive released.

NEW Password Protection – TxtArchive now includes lightweight password protection. You may optionally set a password to keep people from executing TxtArchive and viewing your archived messages. This protection is lightweight in that it does not encrypt the data. It simply keeps the application from running. DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD!

NEW Licensing Ready – For the Android Market, a new licensing mechanism has been provisioned for when the old one is depreciated.

FIXED Incorrect Times/Messages Out of Order – There has long been an issue with GMT time offsets of SMS messages on some phones (particularly Motorola) resulting in text messages appearing out of order in third party SMS applications. Depending on your phone, TxtArchive may be able to fix the issue. You may be able to take advantage of this fix by updating TxtArchive to version 2.2.1. If your phone is a candidate for the fix, TxtArchive will alert you.

Many people have previously circumvented this issue by installing the SMS Time Fix application. This application modifies the times of incoming SMS messages. If you are using SMS Time Fix and no longer have problems with SMS times and ordering, you can continue to do so and you do not need to enable the fix in TxtArchive. If on the other hand you are having issues, with or without using SMS Time Fix, you can enable the fix in TxtArchive and see if it eliminates the problem.

*** ONLY A SMALL MINORITY OF USERS NEED TO APPLY THIS FIX AND ONLY IF YOU EXPERIENCE INCORRECT TIMES AND OUT OF ORDER MESSAGES ***.

After you install/update TxtArchive, and run it for the first time, you will see an alert dialog informing you of the fix. You will only be alerted if your phone is a candidate for the fix. Before you apply the fix, please read the following carefully:

1. If you have just purchased TxtArchive or it was previously uninstalled and you just reinstalled it, your archive should be empty (except for the welcome message). Select “View Archive” to make sure.

2. If you have been using TxtArchive and you have archived messages, we recommend that you perform an “Export All” and check to make sure the messages are safely exported before doing anything.

3. Once the fix is enabled, messages that are currently in your inbox will be archived with the correct time and in the correct order. Messages already in the archive will be unaffected and will remain out of order with the wrong time.

4. If you archive messages after the fix that were also archived before the fix, those messages will be archived again in the correct order. You will then have duplicates – the ones in order and the ones out of order.

5. Before you delete out-of-order messages, make sure the duplicate in-order messages exist.

6. Not all out of order messages can be duplicated since they may have been deleted from the inbox. Those existing out-of-order messages cannot be fixed.

7. Because the fix works on newly archived messages only, if possible, after you confirm that the fix works, it is best to perform an “Export All”, confirm the messages are safely exported, and then perform a “Clear Archive” to start out anew with an empty archive.

Testing your phone:

8. Once everything is safely exported, try archiving at least two sent and two received messages from the same thread and check to see if the archived messages have the correct time and are in the correct order. If they are, you do not need to enable the fix.

9. You can perform this test as follows: (a) select “View Archive”, (b) select a thread, (c) long press a sent message and select “Archive Message” from the popup menu, (d) do the same for a received message, (e) select “View Archive” and check the time and order of the messages.

10. If the messages are out of order, select Settings and enable the fix. Perform the same test as above. If the same messages appear with the correct time and in order keep the fix enabled.

11. If the messages are still out of order, disable the fix and try using SMS Time Fix.

If after trying the new fix, you continue to experience the issue, try using the "Use Phone Time" setting in SMS Time Fix. If that does not work, please contact us with an explination of what you tried and any new results. If you were previously experiencing this issue and the above procedure has resolved it, please consider updating any negetive market rating/review with a five star rating. If you have never rated/reviewed TxtArchive before, please consider giving it a five star rating as well. We here at ZillCe thank you for using TxtArchive.

Google Android Market Ratings

05/11/2011:02:00pm - Much to our dismay, people have left negative market ratings without bothering to contact us. This short section addresses these ratings and comments.

Doesn't group texts together or display accurate times. - Andrew has assumed that if something happens to his phone it must happen to every phone. There are currently over 5000 happy TxtArchive users who do not experience this problem. TxtArchive groups text messages and displays times exactly as defined in your phone's text messaging application. Some phone manufactures have modified the default settings and since TxtArchive does not alter your inbox, text messages in TxtArchive, from different timezones, may appear out of order or not grouped together. This behavior has been reported for Motorola phones only but not all Motorola phones. There are well over 1000 Motorola phone users happily using TxtArchive so we can only assume it happens on only a few. We are in the process of trying to identify which phones have this issue so that we may address the issue. If you experience this issue, please send us an email and let us know what phone model you have and what version of Android it is running. Leaving a negative market rating without contacting us is not helpfull.

This app will not work if your planning on moving the texts to a new phone! - TxtArchive is not a backup and restore program. It is an archiving system. Archiving includes backup, not restore. Had Sally bothered to visit our WEB site or contact us she would have relized this. It does not make any sense to rate applications for not having features it never claimed to have. I suggest that Sally look for a backup and restore program and then rate it based on it's ability to backup and restore.

Does what it says but doesn't save in convo format. - Jaime is having the same issue as Andrew. For all we know, they both have the same one phone model with this problem.

Bought the app but it never downloads. - The purchase and downloading of applications from the Google Android Market is 100% controlled by Google. Christian needed to contact Google for help with this problem. This issue seems to happen to about 1 out of 750 users and usually waiting a few hours results in the downloading working. This is 100% a Google Android Market issue and there is nothing we can do when it happens - even though we suffer the low rating (it is very frustrating).

Need to add MMS archiving. - Like Sally, Jason is rating applications based on features they do not claim to have without simply looking for applications that have the feature he is looking for.

Contacting ZillCe

05/08/2011:03:21pm - Please do not send us emails using your Google Checkout account. We have recently been unable to respond to Google Checkout emails without delivery errors. Please use your gmail or other email account. We are patiently waiting for Google to resolve this problem. If you sent us an email from your Google Checkout account and did not receive a reply, please resend the email using a different email account.

Blank Email and the Droid X

03/29/2011:08:54pm - Some phones, particularly the Droid X, sometimes will not export to email.

In [Settings], when you have "Export to SD Card" un-checked, then all exports will be sent to the email address you set as the "Default Email" or one that you type in manually each time you export. Whenever you export, you should see an email pop up as if you were creating one manually and the text messages should be in the body of the email as if you typed them manually. At this point you must still click the [Send] button or do whatever you must do to send the email as if you created it manually. If you see the email application pop up but the subject and body are blank, the problem may be the following.

We want the email application that pops up to be the Google gmail application not the default email application. This does not refer to the email you are sending the messages to but the application installed on your phone that is popping up to create and send the email. You should have the Google gmail application installed on your phone. We want you to be able to select it as the email application to use when TxtArchive exports.

Look in the [Start] menu where all your application icons are located. The Google gmail application icon looks like a white envelope with a big red M halfway in the envelope. You should have used it the first time you turned on your phone and created your gmail account. If it is not configured you will need to configure it to use your gmail account. Test that you can send an email manually before trying to export. If it is not on your phone, you should be able to download it from the Android Market.

Once you confirm that the Google gmail application is installed on your phone, and that you can send an email manually, if you do not receive a popup to select which email application to use, you need to stop making the current email application the default. To do this, go into [Start] [Settings] [Applications] [Manage Applications] then find the default email application and click the [Clear Defaults] button. Then try exporting again. You should see a pop-up asking you to select the email application you want to use. Select the Google gmail application but make sure the [Use as default] check-box is UNCHECKED so that you can select the email application to use whenever you phone tries to pick one by default.

This procedure is known to fix the issue on the Droid X but may very well work on other phones, particularly other Motorola phones. It seems Motorola has customized a lot of things on their phones so that they do not always behave like a standard Android device. TxtArchive is a very well behaved Android application and expects other phone applications to be the same.

Conversation Format

03/18/2011:02:12am - TxtArchive does not alter your existing inbox. It displays, archives and exports text messages in conversation format based on the structure of your inbox. Some Android phone manufactures have altered the inbox format and text messages may not appear in TxtArchive in conversation format. If you experience this issue please email us with the make, model of your phone and the Android version it is currently running.

TxtArchive Design Principal

03/18/2011:02:00am - This section it to help you understand how TxtArchive was designed to be used. We hope it will help you to decide if TxtArchive is right for you. TxtArchive follows the design principal that you can't possibly keep all of your text messages on your phone. Over time the messages flow from your text messaging application, to TxtArchive to your PC or email as follows:

As you receive text messages you decide which ones you think you want to keep, or you can keep them all. Those are the ones you archive using TxtArchive. Once archived you can delete the text messages from your text messaging application to keep it fresh and clean. Over time the TxtArchive database starts to grow so periodically (one a week, or once a month) you export these older messages either to the SD card on your phone or to your email. Once safely exported, you can delete the messages from TxtArchive and start the process over. You may have already experienced the problem with keeping all of your text messages on the phone. You can have a thread grow to an unmanageable size and if you text message a lot, even run out of memory on your phone.

Keep in mind that once in a file on the SD card you can connect the phone to your PC, usually via a USB cable, and then copy the files to your PC. Either way, as files on your PC or as emails, you have your oldest text messages safety exported off your phone. So, to summarize, the newest messages arrive in your text messaging application. They get archived to TxtArchive and then as they become old, exported to your PC or email. As you archive, you can delete them from your text messaging application. As you export, you can delete them from TxtArchive. When you want to view an old text message, you go to your PC and view the files using Wordpad (not Notepad) or you go to your email application (like gmail) and view them like you would any other email. If you keep them on your SD card you can view them using a file viewer application installed on your phone.

To keep the exported messages organized, you could export your text messages to your gmail account (or any other email account). Then create a label (or folder) and put all of the TxtArchive emails into that label (or folder). Then from your PC you can use the email search feature to locate text messages whenever you want. Keep in mind that you do not have to use your PC because you can even search your email from your phone by accessing your email through the email client on your phone. Keep the phone clean while safely saving your text messages off the phone.

Because of this design principal used by TxtArchive there is no feature allowing you to copy exported text messages back into the TxtArchive database. We do not know of any other text messaging applications that allows this selectively. Some of the other programs will do it but, as far as we are aware, they only backup the text messages in your phone's default text messaging inbox. They are not archive programs but backup programs. TxtArchive is both.

We have had customers ask for the ability to copy exported messages back into TxtArchive. Because of this, this feature is on our future feature list and is seriously being considered for a future release of TxtArchive. We can not, however, at this time guarantee, that it will make the final cut.

Google Android Market Ratings

08/04/2010:12:14am - When you leave a rating on the Android Market without a comment, we - the developer, never sees the rating. It just becomes some amorphous addition to how many of the five stars are colored in. When you do leave a comment, we can see the comment and the rating but have no way of knowing who you are, unless you use the exact same name as when you ordered the product (which very few people do). So for example, there is currently a comment "by anthony" on "June 4, 2010" stating: "This app used to work perfect, now every time i try to send sms to my email it just says sending and never sends. Please fix.". Since Anthony never emailed us, and did not use his last name, I have no way of contacting Anthony for more information to help him fix his problem. He has given TxtArchive a three star rating and yet it is impossible for us to contact him to make him happy. So, please when you have a problem with TxtArchive please contact us at android@zillce.com before you leave an unsatisfactory rating. Conversely, if you are happy with TxtArchive, please consider leaving a five star rating. We would like to have your opinion heard by seeing evermore of that fifth star filled in. Thank you - ZillCE.

TxtArchive 2.2.0

08/01/2010:12:00pm - This version of TxtArchive has been tested on Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. It also fixes force close errors when: (1) accessing the database when running low on memory, (2) archiving or exporting a contact name contained an ' when Group Archive was enabled in settings, (3) exporting a single thread to the SD card when the contact name contained characters considered illegal by the file system. Although not in this latest version, we are currently looking at adding light-weight password protection, additional export formats, MMS inclusion and restore. To cast your vote or if there is a new feature you would like to see in TxtArchive please email us at android@zillce.com.

Force Close During Archiving - Fixed in 2.2.0, please upgrade.

05/24/2010:02:15pm - If TxtArchive is force closing during Archiving check for: (1) that contacts exist with the ' character, (2) "Group Archive - group archive by the contacts name when the message was saved" is enabled in settings. A future release of TxtArchive will fix this problem; however, you can temporrarily fix the problem by dissabling "Group Archive" in settings.

Upgrading to TxtArchive 2.0.3

01/14/2010:10:49pm - Version 2.0.3 fixes a problem some customers are having with receiving an expiration warning. To resolve this problem, please upgrade to version 2.0.3. There is only a small window of time that your messages may have been affected. Only messages Archived after 1/15/2010@Midnight and before upgrading should be affected. After you upgrade, please review all messages you received after 1/15/2010@Midnight and before upgrading. You may need to Archive and/or Export them again. When TxtArchive is purchased from the Android Market, it is not supposed to have expiration. The expiration some of our customers are experiencing is a hold-over from when TxtArchive was entered into the Android Developer Challenge II last summer through the same publishing system as the Android Market. Version 2.0.3 corrects the problem.

Some customers have reported that after receiving the expiration warning, they can no longer find TxtArchive on the Android Market or in "My Downloads" on their phone. This is not a problem with TxtArchive. It is a problem with the Android Market related to certain carriers and firmware updates. In particular the Verizon Droid Eris that received a firmware updated on January 11th as reported here. Once this problem is corrected by Google/HTC/Verizon and they allow you to once again access TxtArchive on the Android Market, upgrading to TxtArchive 2.0.3 will resolve the expiration warning problem. Other phones and carriers may also be affected.

Upgrading to TxtArchive 2.0.2

12/11/2009:06:24am - Version 2.0.2 of TxtArchive fixes a bug that can occur when the phone's contacts database includes a null entry. While it is unusual to have a null contact, it is possible on some phones under circumstances we do not fully understand. The only case we were able to find was on an HTC Hero with Android 1.5, software version 1.56.651.2 resulting in a force close when running Archive All.

Before updating, please read the below sections. The problems described for the HTC Hero with the Sense UI, where upgraded applications sometimes revert back to the original application after a power down/up sequence, appears to be fixed in the HTC 1.56.651.2 update. As always, if you choose to upgrade make sure you read about backing up your messages first.

Upgrading to TxtArchive 2.0.1

11/24/2009:12:31pm - Version 2.0.1 of TxtArchive fixes a bug with improper displaying of today, yesterday and tomorrow in place of the date string. This problem only occured when viewing the inbox or archive messages and did not effect exporting. Also, one change was made. The export filename and export sent date now uses the abreviated month text (Nov) instead of the numerical value (11). This was done to avoid confusion for European users that use the dd/mm/yyyy date format. While TxtArchive does not currently use the locale date format selected from settings, dates are always displayed using the abreviated month text. Look for use of locale in future updates.

Before updating, please read Upgrading from TxtArchive 1.6.0 to 2.0.0 below. We have done additional research and it seems the problems described may be restricted to the HTC Hero with the Sense UI. Upgraded applications sometimes revert back to the origional application after a power down/up sequence. This appears to be a known problem that HTC is aware of. If you choose to upgrade make sure you read about backing up your messages first.

Upgrading from TxtArchive 1.6.0 to 2.0.0

11/13/2009:05:15pm - Version 2.0.0 of TxtArchive is identical in functionality to version 1.6.0. The only difference is that version 1.6.0 supports Android platforms 1.5 (Cupcake) and 1.6 (Donut) while version 2.0.0 also supports Android platforms 2.0 (Eclair). We do NOT recommend upgrading from TxtArchive 1.6.0 to 2.0.0 until your phone is upgraded to the Android platform 2.0. Why? The reasons are technical and complicated and involve known problems that can occur when upgrading applications. We have extensively tested the upgrade process here at ZillCE; however, Google does not make the Android Marketplace available to developers to test installations or upgrades (they are looking into changing this practice). While we do not anticipate any problems, we are officially taking the conservative view that until your phone runs Android 2.0 there is no value and only risk in upgrading from TxtArchive 1.6.0 to 2.0.0. We hope that by the time you need to upgrade, we will have had an opportunity to test the Android Marketplace extensively.

With that said, you are free to upgrade; however, if you do so please be advised that: (1) you do so at your own risk, (2) export all of your archived messages either to the SD card or email or both, (3) the possibility exists that you will need to uninstall TxtArchive and reinstall it thus loosing your currently archived messages on the phone. This is why it is essential that you export all of your archived messages first. The risk is that you may no longer have your archived messages on your phone. As long as you export them first, you will have them safe on the SD card and/or in your email. Since we only read from the phone's inbox, and those messages are stored in the phone's database, not the TxtArchive database, messages that are still in your inbox will never be affected. You may be thinking you want 2.0.0 because it must be "better" than 1.6.0. If you decide to upgrade, please consider that 1.6.0 functions and looks identical in every way to 2.0.0.

For those of you who are interested, the reason we needed to come out with an upgrade to TxtArchive is because in Android 2.0 the method we were using to translate phone numbers into contact names was depreciated and no longer worked. The old method works fine on Android 1.5 and 1.6 but had to be changed in 2.0. The Contacts.Phone.CONTENT_FILTER_URL class was depreciated and replaced by ContactsContract.PhoneLookup.CONTENT_FILTER_URI. As for the known problems associated with upgrading applications on Android, feel free to visit the numerous blogs that exist. The most problematic situation concerns loosing application icons and applications crashing after an upgrade and followed by a power down/up cycle. We have done extensive testing here at ZillCE and think we may know why it happens and under what circumstances; however, we have no definitive conformation of this from the manufactures. We have designed TxtArchive so that it does not embody those circumstances. Now quit wasting your time reading this technical stuff and go text your friends and enjoy TxtArchive!

Google Marketplace Less than 5 Star Ratings

We here at ZillCE take our user's ratings of our products on the Google Marketplace seriously. Because Google allows only limited comments by users and no opportunity for developers to respond, and they do not rate the credibility of user's comments, we sometimes contact the users to clarify their reasoning behind a particular rating. This is where we provide additional information about ratings to help you make an informed decision before purchasing our products.

11/23/2009:09:10am - Melanie Sun, Nov 22, 2009 - 2* - "Date of message was wrong!". We contacted Melanie to ask her to elaborate and she told us she uses European date format (dd/mm/yyyy). While this did not prove to be the root cause of the problem it did lead us quickly to the solution. The fix is in version 2.0.1. We would like to thank Melanie for her patience and help in identifying this problem and her updated rating to 5* and her updated comment: "Date of message was wrong, but they solved the problem within 36 hours and [I am] awaiting the update as I type".

11/17/2009:01:12pm - Nick Tue, Nov 17, 2009 - 3* - "Okay, needs IMAP capabilities to be worth the money really". We contacted Nick as follows: Would you please elaborate on your reasoning as to why IMAP would be usefully and exactly what added functionality it would bring to TxtArchive? Nick's response: "I was looking around for a temporary replacement for SMS Backup (which was broken for me by Cyanogen's latest build). The aforementioned app uses IMAP to backup text messages to the user's GMail account as if it were an email, grouping them in conversations and allowing a label to be added. This is hugely useful, since it allows the user to search their previous SMS messages via GMail, but without having to keep thousands of messages stored locally". ZillCE's response: (1) With TxtArchive there is no need to "keep thousands of messages stored locally" since you can export local messages to your SD card or email at any time. You can then store your messages anywhere you choose. (2) Whether stored locally or after export you can search for messages by simply using your application's search feature. (3) We did not set out to duplicate features of existing applications. Our feeling is that Nick simply prefers one feature over another. (4) We would like to point out that the reason Nick is trying to replace the SMS backup program he normally uses is because it is "broken" after an update to a custom Android operating system build that he uses on his phone. Meanwhile TxtArchive functions flawlessly under the same circumstances - just without the feature Nick prefers. Stability and reliability are the cornerstones of ZillCE applications. Nick's paraphrased response: Nick feels TxtArchive is a solid product but could use "stand out" features and better formatting of exported messages. Again, like his original comment on the Google Marketplace, he emphasizes the issue of "free" vs. paid applications and when an application is worth paying for. ZillCE's response: We feel TxtArchive's standout features are stability and reliability. We agree with him that users may desire more than one export format and we will certainly consider adding other formats in future updates. As for "free" vs. paid - we do not consider software that includes advertising "free". The obvious cost is simply shifted from the user to the advertiser. Your cost as a user is, being subjected to advertising, the cost of buying an advertised product you didn't know you needed, having your usage patterns monitored and exploited, and any carrier charges you may have due to the increased data traffic. We thank Nick for his insightful comments and his closing remark that "I'm impressed that a developer cares enough about Market comments to contact its users, so thank you!"