How to stop text messages piling up on Android

[alison]

While I'm using this forum for IT support ...

 

Can someone please tell me how to detach previous texts from a person from the current text you're sending them via Android?  Every time I start a new text to someone, my entire texting history with that person comes with it!  I don't necessarily always want to delete the whole of the previous conversations, as sometimes they contain important information I want to keep, but archiving the thread seems to make no difference.  Surely there is a way of creating a completely new text without it coming with loads of excess baggage?

[Jan McNulty]

When you say the whole thread comes up do you mean that the whole thread is sent to the recipient of the text?

 

The whole thread shows up on Apple too but only the latest text is sent to the recipient which preserves the thread but doesn't irritate the recipient.

[alison]

Not that I know of!  I just want to be able to separate different conversations with the same person out so that I can delete the rubbishy bits and keep anything important.  At the moment, it's either keep it all or delete it all, which is ridiculous.

[Guest oncnp]

23 minutes ago, alison said:

Not that I know of!  I just want to be able to separate different conversations with the same person out so that I can delete the rubbishy bits and keep anything important.  At the moment, it's either keep it all or delete it all, which is ridiculous.

 

Funny - when I open a messaging thread and touch the "trash can" icon at the top, it allows me to pick which messages I want to delete. Don't know what version of android I'm on though (except an old one)

Edited August 19, 2020 by oncnp
still can't spell!

[bridiem]

I've just looked at my texts, and it seems that if the person is in my contacts, I can click on the three dots at the top, select Delete and then choose the messages I want to delete. If it's someone not in my contacts, it just says DELETE at the top, but if you click on that you still get the option to choose which to delete.

[alison]

It never occurred to me that you could delete individual messages rather than the whole thread, so thanks for that.  But I still can't separate out individual conversations from each other if they're with the same person?

[bridiem]

On 19/08/2020 at 19:44, alison said:

It never occurred to me that you could delete individual messages rather than the whole thread, so thanks for that.  But I still can't separate out individual conversations from each other if they're with the same person?

 

As far as I know you can't do that. Since the messages are chronological that at least keeps them in order. But texting isn't exactly flexible!

[Anon2]

I’m an Apple user but on a thread of messages to either another Apple user or android user if I open a thread of chat and hold my finger on a particular message to highlight it I can then delete, copy, forward etc 

[alison]

On 19/08/2020 at 17:49, oncnp said:

 

Funny - when I open a messaging thread and touch the "trash can" icon at the top, it allows me to pick which messages I want to delete. Don't know what version of android I'm on though (except an old one)

 

Found out why I was only intermittently able to delete messages: you need to press and hold on an individual message to bring up the "delete" command - I was only tapping on them.  That still doesn't solve the problem of everything being run into the same thread (except sometimes, but not always, when I press "Archive"), but it's a step in the right direction ...