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Monday, October 17, 2011

Transfer SMS Messages from Nokia (Symbian) to Android


Two months ago, I switched from my Nokia N8 to my new Samsung Galaxy S II handset. Of course, I had to move all my data from the old phone to the new one. Didn't know, however, that switching between Symbian and Android isn't very well facilitated. It was pretty easy to move contacts, pictures and media from Symbian to Android but the complicated part was moving sms messages. I found some helpful methods online such as this (I suggest you try it first before reading further and trying my method) but unfortunately it didn't work for me because my Ovi Suite version was new and not supported by the Nokia2AndroidSMS application (it failed to extract my messages). So, I had to figure out a different way to do this, which required some coding. I decided to share my method with the world as I'm sure lots of other users faced similar problems. This should work no matter what version of Ovi Suite you got:
  1. Connect your Nokia handset and start Nokia Ovi Suite on your PC
  2. Create a backup .nbu file (it doesn't matter what you select for backup, as long as it includes messages)
  3. Download NBU Explorer (open-source program which allows you to explore .nbu backup files and export them)
  4. Run NbuExplorer.exe > File > Open > Browse to your .nbu file and open it
  5. Go to the Messages tab and click on "Export Messages" button located above the table on the right pane
  6. in the "Save as type" field, select (*.xml) and save the file
    • ATTENTION: As of version 3.0 of NbuExplorer, it now natively supports exporting messages in SMS Backup & Restore XML format, so you can export your messages in this format and skip to step 13. Thanks to Petrusek for adding this useful feature :)
  7. I wrote a little tool which converts the .xml file to the format accepted by the SMS Backup & Restore Android application. Download XML2Android.exe
  8. Save the tool in the same folder where you saved the .xml extracted file
  9. Open the command line console (Win7: Start > type "cmd" and press enter)
  10. CD to the directory where you saved the files (e.g. CD C:\my_messages\)
  11. Execute: XML2Android <yourfile.xml> (e.g. XML2Android my_sms.xml)
  12. This will generate a file called AndroidSMS.xml, copy this file to your Android phone
  13. On your Android, download the SMS Backup & Restore app from Google Play
  14. Now, simply run the app on your phone and Restore your old messages from the generated XML file. You're done!
Note: A user reported that he faced some problems with weird characters in the exported XML file from NBU Explorer. The XML2Android app will report the location of the invalid character(s) so make sure you modify the file using a text editor (I recommend Notepad++) to remove the bad lines and re-run the app against it (to avoid missing messages). Thanks to "Dr. Manjit M" who reported this problem below in the comments.

Note 2: The XML2Android.exe tool requires .Net Framework 3.5 to run, if you have Windows 7 it shouldn't be a problem (you might need to install the required framework on other Windows versions). Also, it is a basic tool which I wrote roughly without capturing any exceptions or false usage... Make sure you use it correctly before reporting any bugs

Edit5: Updated link to XML2Android.exe executable.
Edit4: Updated post with NbuExplorer's native support for exporting messages in the appropriate format
Edit3: Updated the XML2Android.exe tool to set empty values for missing elements (should reduce error possibility)
Edit2: Added exception handling to skip erroneous messages
Edit: There was a bug with the XML2Android.exe originally uploaded app. It has now been fixed

204 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Dear owner.
Link of the program (XML2android.exe) you wrote is expired. Could you upload it again? Or does anyone who has the program is willing to share it.
Many thanks
Donny

FZ said...

Hello, seems like Dropbox disabled the original download link (some kind of policy change I guess) but I updated the post with the new link so it should be back up now :)

Roger skunk said...

Hi
I tried your method for Nokia 5800 Xpress Music to K20 Pro
It worked well....
But drafts were not restored
I exported all messages but only inbox and sent restored.
How to restore draft...?

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Thank you!! Still works (old symbian nokia + new android). Everything restored, no errors.

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