Saving iMessage chats to a laptop

[Julysadness]

My husband died recently and, like many people, most of our communication when we weren’t together was via text message. So lots of our day to day life was documented there.

i would like to be able to download this chat to a laptop chat so i can more easily read through it all.
Can anyone advise how I can do that please?

There are a couple of ways but probably the simplest is to "print" them to a PDF document on Mac OS device that is linked to your Apple ID

I suggest the following steps to export an imessage conversation

1. Log in to a Mac OS device that connected to your Apple ID. (i.e. a Laptop, Mac mini or iMac)
2. Open the iMessage application and select the "conversation"
3. From the File menu select Print
4. From the PDF dropdown menu, select Save as PDF (or one of the other options if you prefer)

This assumes that your iMessages are backed-up to iCloud, which they probably are.

Please advise if you need additional clarification, especially around step 1, (i.e. if you don't have access to a Mac already)

Thank you for that. I don’t have a Mac, unfortunately. Guess I could get one if that is the only solution.

You'll only need access to a Mac while you export the conversations, do you not know anyone (that you can trust) with a Mac?

(Be aware that it will require you to log onto your apple Account, so only do this with someone you trust 100% and delete the user account afterwards)

The much slower way to do it is to click into each chat (hold your finger down on each chat) and the option to copy the chat will come up. You can then copy and paste into an email and send to yourself. It's not ideal but it will do the job, albeit slowly and cumbersomely. Alternatively, take lots of screenshots and send them to your email or sync them to your laptop using image transfer software such as Photo Transfer from the Apple Store.

Further to my message above OP, have a look at: https://imazing.com/

CopyTrans for Windows will do exactly what you want. There is a charge but it’s not expensive. It has a number of functions but the one you need is CopyTrans Contacts. Messages can be saved in various formats. PDF would probably be most suitable for you.
https://www.copytrans.net/