How to Save Your Logs

Cell phone monitoring software comes in handy in a lot of cases. Some people actually use cell phone monitoring software to help back up data on their phones. This can come in handy more times than you might think. But not all phone spy software programs save your data forever. Call, text, and social media logs might only be saved through your account for a short period of time. Here’s how to save your logs and easily access them later in a flash, all without wasting excessive amounts of data.

The Skinny on Saving Logs

Times vary but many cell phone monitoring software programs only keep logs of data accrued from monitoring a phone for a short period of time. This can range anywhere from a couple weeks to thirty days all the way up to a couple months at any given time. It’s hard to expect your software to keep the data it collects forever. Since it’s collecting hundreds of messages each and every day, saving everything can slow your software down drastically should it go unchecked and radically impair your software’s usability.

Hence, deleting older logs. The key to ensuring that you can save important data involves acting quickly and being aware of when things will be deleted from your phone. Make a note of when to perform regular log updates. It maybe helpful to set aside a day every month to save them and dedicate an external hard drive or folder in a cloud storage folder to save all of your logs if you decide that the data inside them is important enough to save.

The Wonders of CSV

CSV has been around for years. As it turns out, many monitor text messages iphone programs save the data that they accrue from monitoring a phone, including texts and social media messages, in CSV files.

What is CSV? Called “Comma Separated Values”, CSV files are helpful for exchanging data between multiple programs. Multiple programs can open and read the data inside the files. For example, Microsoft Excel, which you likely have, is fully capable of reading and opening CSV files. CSV files are a little outdated. The rest of the world has moved on to XML data exchanges. But they’re easy to use, making CSV logs a great choice for examining wide wreathes of data without expending and wasting excessive amounts of storage space.

Fields in CSV are separated with commas, hence the name. Each record taken, in this case a text, is separated on each line, so it’s easy to decipher data when you have a chance to take a look at it.

Downloading Your Call Log

First, log into your phone tracking app software account. Then visit your web panel. By scrolling through, depending on the software, you should see an option where you can download CSV logs. Select the file. Your download should start immediately and likely won’t take long to download due to the relatively small size of the file.

Open up the file with your program of choice (that will probably be Microsoft Excel for most users, which we recommend for beginners). You’ll then be able to review your logs and decide if there are any texts or messages you wish to keep. We recommend labeling each file with the date range that they cover and storing them in an easy to find folder. You’ll get the most use out of your CSV logs if you’re careful about organizing your data.

With that, now you know how to save your call logs. Always make sure that you back up your call logs quickly and understand how CSV works.