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How to save voicemail from your loved ones

Third in a series of posts to help you organize your family memories…

Part 1 (7 steps to manage your photos)

Part 2 (4 steps for curating home videos) 

Part 4 (4 steps for digitizing old photos)

Part 5 (Curating kids artwork)

Last year, Save Family Photos shared a guest blog post that Hilarie wrote there.

From that, there have been a few comments about holding onto voicemails from loved ones.

Voicemail could be considered an older form of communication (do people still use their phones to talk to one another?), so while there are many ways to keep voicemail, none are really easy to use. You would think there would be an app you could use to grab the voicemail from your carrier’s server, save it as a mp3 & download it, but apparently, there isn’t.

Many carriers provide a forwarding service – usually called visual voicemail or something similar – or you could use Google Voice, and that would allow you to save voicemails.

But what if you already have a voicemail from a loved one and want to save it?  There are many ways to do it, but most are overly complicated and require above-average computer skills.

There are several call recording apps that could be used, but I’ve found a couple problems with them:

  1. They don’t always record voicemail
  2. You’re giving permission to a third party to record audio on your phone. That could be a concern for some.

I have found one way that works well that is also easy.  This article on cnet – though fairly old – still works today. Read it for all the details, but here are the basics:

  1. Download and install Audacity (free)
  2. Buy a mini y male to male cable for $5-6.
  3. Connect your phone to computer, record on Audacity, play the voicemail(s)
  4. Edit as needed, then save

This will give you possession of the audio file so you don’t have to rely on your carrier keeping it forever.

Do you know of any other ways – specifically apps – that can be used to do this?  If so, share in the comments.

Thanks to Cnet for the detailed tutorial.

UPDATE IN 2018: Another option is a paid service specifically designed to save your precious voicemails. Let us know if you’ve used Voicemails Forever and what you think!

 

You make memories. We make them last.

 

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