Extracting text messages (SMS) from a *.NBF file (phone side backup file)

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Sharjeel Uqaili

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Mar 14, 2010, 4:27:56 PM3/14/10

to Noki - Extracting Everything for Nokia PC Suite

I had a very unstable Nokia 6301 that lasted me a grand total of 3
months of sluggish feverish performance before it finally crapped out
on me. Luckily i had used the phone's backup feature to backup
contacts and messages etc on to a *.NBF file on the phone's SD card.

So came the fun part of extracting data from the NBF file. After much
research i was able to find that this is merely a ZIP file and the
contacts are all sitting inside as vCards. I have been able to
successfully recover all my contacts.

Now i am greedy for even more and would like to see if i can extract
my saved text messages and be able to import them back into my current
phone (Nokia 6300) via PC Suite.

I reckon the text messages reside in these folders inside the
extracted NBF:

\predefmessages\1
\predefmessages\3
\predefmessages\5

These folders contain multiple files with filenames of the following
format, with no file extension:

00000E4A367730D100002012005000000010100000000000000000000000000

I tried opening these files via Notepad but all i see is jargon, so
they're coded in some way. I have not been unable to open these files
via either Noki or any other software.

Any ideas guys?

hz

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Mar 14, 2010, 7:57:33 PM3/14/10

to Noki - Extracting Everything for Nokia PC Suite

hi,

You can try to find private\Mail2 folder for more messages. Those
preefmessages can also be in .nbu or backup.arc.

It's not meant to convert on pc side and restore to the phone - Nokia
just simply fobids copy-n-paste in sms folders - there's some log/
indexing they kept elsewhere and think it's hard to keep those info
sync.

Nokia SMS is usually encoded in UCS2. And you have to guess where the
date time starts/ends. It's not a simply task if you just want to do
it manually.