[Macworld]

Post your comments for So many SMS messages, so little time to delete them here

[flowney]

Applescript on the iPhone? (Steve Jobs swoons in a case of the faux vapors).

[PeterG]

You have a counter?

I wish they would fix .mac/MM. there is no counter, or sort.

Maybe Mr. Steve could swoon over the paying customers using MM?

http://homepage.mac....otoAlbum16.html

[heggaton]

I would've thought that you could simply delete the 'conversation' - unless you wanted to retain some pre-existing SMS's or the SMS's came from different originating numbers.

[manny928]

You can delete an entire conversation, but system messages from a network usually come with a unique identifier so it's actually individual conversations. So each time the system notifies you it's a new IM conversation. I get these all the time too and it's a real pain. I would love a 'delete all' option.

[SpinThis!]

While we wait for Apple to include this, I got a better idea for you... find the programmer who wrote the monitoring code and have him remove your 185 text messages himself. Then tell him to fix his code so that kind of crap doesn't happen again. Sounds like a monitoring system that cries wolf too often without doing a proper sanity check first.

[macmanmk]

The same complaint can be leveled against Mail. Why am I given the ability to purge the Trash folder in one fell swoop, but not my Inbox or Sent folders?

[tmedia1]

Can't believe Apple hasn't addressed these fundamental and basic interface requirements. Deleting 100 emails or text messages on my Palm is simple. On an iPhone, it takes about 15 minutes. Ridiculous!

[Filburt]

bq. As you know, deleting a text message on an iPhone is a two step process on an iPhone: 1. Swipe the offending message with your finger. 2. Hit the delete button that appears.
I must be missing something because I can't swipe delete even a single text message on my iPhone -- only the entire conversation. Has the author tried what he's suggesting on his iPhone? Or is he using some secret beta firmware that he wasn't supposed to disclose?

[stukdog]

I'm in the same position when I have servers go down. It's horrible.
I don't know if it helps, but I did notice one thing that helps. If you forward these to the @mobile.att.net address, they all come in as separate SMS messages. But if you send to @mobile.mycingular.com then they all come in under the same sending address.
That has worked for most people I worked with on it. (Even if they didn't have Cingular previous to AT&T)

[toblo]

I can do this in iPhone standard SMS app:
1. At the SMS correspondent list, tap the Edit button on the top left corner.
2. A round delete button will appear on the left for every corespondent. Tap on the one that you want to delete all messages from.
3. Tap confirm Delete button.
All messages for that correspondent is deleted.

[igrok]

And to just clear a conversation without deleting the person you're having the conversation with, just hit the "clear" button. It deletes all the texts in that conversation.

[mjew]

This is an excellent tip! I just tried it, and it is true.
(Although I tested that messages to @mobile.mycingular.net
each come from a unique source, while messages to
@mobile.mycingular.com all come from a single source,
and are thereby considered one "conversation" that can be
deleted or cleared in one action.)
So much more convenient, and sort of avoids the problem.

For those commenters saying to just "delete the entire
conversation", don't forget the author is saying that each
message appears to come from a different "person",
and so are not part of a single conversation.

This tip, however, does make those 100s of messages indeed part of
a single conversation.

[leicaman]

The solutions here are great. But how about having the network send email instead of SMS?