Question: iOS seems to refuse to allow me to email "long" voice memos, and I'm unaware of any way to extract them from iTunes backups of my phone. How can I retrieve entire voice memos that aren't really short?

Answer: 
[This answer](https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/44914/5472) by [jmlumpkin](https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/181/jmlumpkin) is canonically correct, all existing memos sync over to a special "Voice Memos" playlist in iTunes. However, if you like to record voice memos that you will retrieve later on your computer, my suggestion would be to check out [DropVox](http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/dropvox/). Instead of having to go through iTunes, DropVox uploads your recordings to your DropBox folder as soon as you finish recording, which for me is far more convenient than syncing and dealing with iTunes. Personally, I have completely dropped Voice Memos and now completely use DropVox for everything.

![](https://i.imgur.com/ELpX3.png) ![](https://i.imgur.com/u1Qb7.png)

Another avenue to avoid iTunes but still use the Voice Memo app is to use a software package like [PhoneView](http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/) to grab your existing memos directly from the device.
There is an unclear aspect of iTunes which isn't mentioned in the other answers here.

After selecting the iPhone, iTunes (12.1.2.27) shows an *On My Device > Voice Memos* list in the sidebar. However, this list doesn't actually seem to show all the voice memos on the device(!).

In particular, newly recorded memos don't seem to show for me, although they do in the [PhoneView](http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/) app. Perhaps memos only appear in that list after the device has been synced.

So: don't try and use the *On My Device > Voice Memos* list to retrieve memos from the device. Use the solutions mentioned in the other answers here instead.