How to export your AT&T Visual Voicemail and convert them to a more usable format.
Imagine you get a call from a local celebrity, extolling how amazing your product or service is. Or you get a lengthy voicemail from your boss on some major changes for your department. It’s fine if you leave that voicemail on your phone, but what if you want to play that voicemail for others to hear or post the praise (with permission) for all to enjoy? If you have AT&T Visual Voicemail (downloadable from the Google Play Store) and another free app called Mp3 Converter, that’s not only possible… it’s easy.
It should go without saying that this only works with AT&T devices. You can install the AT&T Visual Voicemail on phones from other carriers, but the application won’t work. With that said, let’s walk through the process of exporting and converting a voicemail into the MP3 format.
Exporting
The first step is to export the voicemail from the Visual Voicemail app. Here’s how:
- Open the Visual Voicemail app
- From the main window (Figure A), long-press the voicemail to be converted
- Tap Export to file
Figure A
The Visual Voicemail main window.
The file will now be found in the Music folder of either your phone’s internal memory or the SD card (depending on your device). The file will be in the .amr format and will have a file name that resembles this example:
voicemail-DATE-TIME.amr
In the example, DATA is the full date and TIME is the time the voicemail was saved.
Converting
Converting with Mp3 Converter is quite simple. Here’s the process:
- Open up Mp3 Converter
- From the main window (Figure B), tap the Browse button
- Locate the .amr voicemail file
- Tap Convert
Figure B
Mp3 Converter is as simple as it gets for converting to MP3.
The converted MP3 file will have the same filename as the .amr file but with the .mp3 file extension. You can now share that voicemail file out however you need.
Noye: You can change the bitrate of the file in the conversion process. By default, it copies the same bitrate from the .amr file. You can change it to:
- 64 Kbit/s
- 128 Kbit/s
- 256 Kbit/s
To do this, tap the settings icon from the Mp3 Converter main window. Tap the Bitrate drop-down and select the desired bitrate. The caveat to this is that changing the bitrate of a file with poor audio quality will not improve the original. So, if the voicemail file isn’t the best, you won’t get much improvement from upping the bitrate. The .amr format rates range from 4.75 to 12.2 kbit/s with toll quality speech starting at 7.4 kbit/s… so, the original file will not be the highest of quality.
There are plenty of reasons to export voicemail and convert them to a useable format. With the help of AT&T Visual Voicemail, this process is quite simple.
Clearly, there are security and legal implications here. Without consent, you cannot distribute a voicemail for all to hear. So, always make sure you have permission from the caller to use that exported voicemail file.
