How to Retrieve Voice Memo from iPhone without iTunes

Today, my colleague called me in a frenzy to ask me to help her burn some voice memo she recorded on her iPhone to a CD. Apparently, it is not as easy as one would imagine. It’s not something I had done myself, so I’m just going to write it down for people who might need help here.

Firstly, my colleague had never used iTunes. That presents the first problem. She needed the file immediately and I do not have the time to download iTunes, install it and set it up for her iPhone in order to get that 34 minute long memo voice file. I tried plugging in her iPhone to my computer with iTunes but needless to say, my iTunes immediately asks to set up her iPhone as new or use my backup up iPhone. That is not good. The thing about iPhone is, only one PC can be used with one phone.

So here are the steps, do ensure you have WIFI or 3G on.

1) Open up Voice Memos app on the iPhone.
2) Select the Voice Memo you want to be burned on CD.
3) Select Share, a pop up will appear, Select Email.
4) Only 8 min of Voice Memo can be emailed at a time. Here, you’ll have to manually cut the voice memo into separate 8 min parts to be emailed to yourself.
5) Check your email and download the files in parts, you should name them for your reference for eg. a, b, c etc. The files are going to be in .m4a format.
6) Fire up your favourite burning software, Nero Express that came with your burner. Put in your CD and choose Burn Audio CD.
7) Verify your CD after burning and you should be able to hear what you recorded from your Voice Memo app.