Page size. BackupPaper writes the PDF on US Letter pages. On Letter paper, print at actual size. On A4 paper, choose the fit or shrink option in your print dialog so nothing at the edges is cut off; Letter is a little wider and shorter than A4, so the pages scale down only slightly.
The header. The first page opens with the conversation name and a block of facts: the device the backup came from, the backup date, the participants, the service, the number of messages with the first and last dates, and the export time with a note that the backup was opened read-only. If rows were left out, such as group renames or reactions to messages outside the thread, a Not shown line counts them, so the printout says what it skips.
The message table. Each row has three columns. The first gives the date and a 24-hour time in this PC's time zone. The second names the sender, in bold for messages sent from the phone that was backed up. The third holds the text, followed by reactions such as Loved with the name of whoever reacted, a note when the message is a reply, and an Attachment line naming each attached file.
The footer. Every page carries the conversation name and its page number out of the total, which keeps a stack of paper in order and makes a page range easy to find before you print.
How long it will be. Length depends on the conversation. On one desktop PC, a 10,000-message conversation became an 826-page PDF in about five seconds. Check the page count in your PDF viewer before you print, print a page range if you need only part of the thread, and consider double-sided printing for long ones.
Text and symbols. Emoji are drawn with the Windows emoji font. Characters that no available font can draw appear as boxes, and BackupPaper counts them. Arabic and Indic scripts print as separate letters, so for those languages export a CSV as well; it keeps the text exactly.
What is not on the page. Photos and videos are not printed; each attachment line gives only the file name. One PDF holds one conversation, so print each thread separately. If the printout is for a lawyer, a court or an insurer, BackupPaper makes no claim about how they will treat it, and nothing here is legal advice. Our article on printing iPhone text messages for court covers what people are often asked for.
Before any of this, the backup has to hold the texts. Apple says a computer backup leaves out iMessages and texts that already sync to iCloud. If Messages in iCloud is on, there may be little or nothing to print, and BackupPaper will say the backup has no conversations.