Text message documents

You can review iMessage, SMS, and WhatsApp text message threads as documents in the application. In addition to messages, you can view the names and phone numbers of participants, attachments, images, videos, dates and times of the thread, the number of messages in the thread, and other metadata.

To review text message threads as documents:

Tip: People frequently use informal language, abbreviations, and jargon in chats, and typos may be common. Because of this, you should adjust your search and review strategy to make sure that you do not miss any important information. If you use keyword highlights to identify important content, your administrator or review lead should make sure that any search term families include all relevant phrases.

In the List pane, select a text message document.

Tip: To search for text message documents, create a search that includes the Document Type field with a value of iMessage, SMS, or WhatsApp. For information about how to create a search, see Perform an advanced search.

In the View pane, select a format for viewing the text message documents. You can review text message documents in Formatted content, Unformatted content, Native, Office Online viewer, or Image viewer formats.

Note: Depending on the format you select, the application displays images and videos in the text thread with the accompanying text. The application also creates images, videos, and other attachments to text messages as separate application documents that are attached to the message thread document.

A summary table appears at the top of the text thread. This table contains the participants in the thread and displays the number of attachments and messages that they sent in the thread.

In the summary table in Formatted content view, you can click a person’s name or phone number to display highlights for all content that was sent by an individual. Click in the MSG column to view only messages sent by a specific person or click in the ATC column to view only attachments.

Note: You can display highlights for multiple people or organizations at the same time.

If a text message thread includes attachments, they are also attached to the text message document in the application. For information about how to display attachments on the Documents page, see Set search preferences.

To add annotations to a text message document, you can create an image file of the text message document and then annotate the image file. For information about how to convert documents into images, see Create image files of documents with Imaging. For information about how to add annotations to documents, see Highlight and redact documents.