Telephone Answering Devices

Question: Does RadioShack still sell tapes for tape-based answering devices?

Answer: Yes. The answering machine tapes that we currently carry are available on our on-line catalog page.

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Question: How do I copy a message from my digital answering machine to another device (such as a tape recorder)?

Answer: This is a question we actually get rather frequently. It is often asked either for legal reasons or in order to save a message that was left by a loved one who later passed away. While there is no direct way to connect our answering machines to a recorder, we recommend in this situation that you place the microphone of the recording device near the answering machine's speaker, press RECORD on the recording device, and then play the message.

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Question: How do I recover a message that I deleted from my answering machine?

Answer: This is another common question, asked for much the same reasons as the previous. While we do not offer data recovery services, it may be possible to recover a message under certain circumstances.

If the message was recorded on a tape and no additional messages have been recorded since the message was deleted, then it may be possible for a magnetic data recovery company to recover the message. If additional messages have been recorded, however, then it is possible that the message has been overwritten.

Please note: we are not aware of any company which specifically performs this function and cannot recommend or suggest one. The only suggestion that we can offer would be to check the yellow pages and/or to do a web search.

If the message was recorded on a digital answering machine, however, then there is no way to recover a deleted message. The data on our digital answering machines is stored on a chip, and there is no company that we are aware of that recovers this kind of data.

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