How to edit contact so they use iMessage?

okanagan.mike

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Sep 13, 2014
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My understanding is that the phone # is greyed out on the iPhone when you check. My DIL doesn't have a phone number listed there.

The update is that I got to talk to her last night for a few brief minutes on Skype just before she had to put her daughter to bed. Apparently her phone says Waiting for Activation, so things are not quite like they were described to me. My son acknowledges that he doesn't get iMessages from her either, which is contrary to what was originally told to me. I have sent them a link to a page on how to fix the problem, but with a three year old of her own, and another younger one that she looks after, it may take a while for her to be able to find the time, especially when she is still able to SMS her contacts.

I will let folks know when this is resolved. I appreciate everyone's help!

Mike
 

BreakingKayfabe

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Isn't the phone # supposed to be grayed out in "send and receive"? Mine is. Or did I misunderstand?


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5
Yeah. It's supposed to be greyed out with the checkmark. I should have said that it shouldn't be greyed out without a checkmark.

My understanding is that the phone # is greyed out on the iPhone when you check. My DIL doesn't have a phone number listed there.

The update is that I got to talk to her last night for a few brief minutes on Skype just before she had to put her daughter to bed. Apparently her phone says Waiting for Activation, so things are not quite like they were described to me. My son acknowledges that he doesn't get iMessages from her either, which is contrary to what was originally told to me. I have sent them a link to a page on how to fix the problem, but with a three year old of her own, and another younger one that she looks after, it may take a while for her to be able to find the time, especially when she is still able to SMS her contacts.

I will let folks know when this is resolved. I appreciate everyone's help!

Mike
Since it's stuck on waiting for activation then what she needs to do is go into send & receive again, sign out of her Apple ID at the top again sign back in, and wait for the activation while not on WiFi. I've had that "waiting for activation" message before and for some reason getting on cellular data made that activate quicker.
 

ajg23#IM

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Good ideas here. I helped someone with this and it took some time for iMessage to activate.

Also consider initiating a Messages conversation by typing in the other person's email address (associated with iMessage) rather than phone number.
 

kevind50

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In YOUR contacts, ensure her device is flagged as an iPhone rather than just a Mobile phone. Also, on HER device, ensure that she has enabled iMessage. That should do the trick...
 

okanagan.mike

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I haven't checked back in as there is nothing to report just yet. My son is now out of town for several months and didn't get the issue fixed before he left. I will be visiting my DIL two weeks, and will try to fix it then. The latest is that when she is home, she sends iMessages, but when she is out and about, they come in as SMS instead. I will try Heisenberg's fix when I see her and report back.

Thanks everybody!

Mike
 

isaiah orot

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Could be a bug my girl friend is from Japan and I'm in hawaii . I have no international texting . But yet we still can text eachother and facetime . Her bubble is green indicating iMessage is off but we still can send messages to each other . So I tested it swap my sim and put it in my nexus 5 . Sure enough we can't text each other . Put it sim back in my iphone 6 and we are able to send and receive texts from eachother
 

isaiah orot

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I think there's a setting to allow imessage to use data that might be disabled . When she's home she's probably on wifi and that's why it's working when she's at home
 

Darran

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This could be a few things and I'm going to state the obvious but this could be a combination of things here.

If she isn't getting iMessages when she's away from home she might not have an active data connection for instance she might have exceeded her monthly data allowance hence why it works at home when she's on wifi.

The main problem is that her iPhone phone number isn't registered so she will need to turn iMessage off and then back on and in send & receive she should see her number ticked and also greyed out. If turning off and on doesn't work this might be due to her not having any available network data to send the request. Try rebooting the iPhone and then turning iMessage off and on. Also be aware that if she has an iPad or iPod Touch with iMessage active some of her messages might end up there! I have a few friends who occasionally turn iMessage off because they're convinced they're missing messages from people and what happens is they still have it on their iPad and people send a message which goes through as an iMessage and its delivered to their iPads and not their iPhones as its turned off on their iPhones and as they hardly use their iPads they never know about all the messages.

Someone did mention this before but ask her what email address she is using in her iPhone and then send her an iMessage but send it to her email not her phone number and this should send as blue on your end and appear on hers as an iMessage and this will prove its just her number not activated for iMessage yet.
 

okanagan.mike

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Okay folks. I am at my DIL's and have tried every single thing mentioned here. All I can get is "Waiting for activation" and I don't get past that.

I have:

  • Turned iMessage and FaceTime off and on.
  • Rebooted the phone multiple times.
  • Logged in and out of her account.

I am here for a couple more hours, so would appreciate any further ideas.

Thanks!

Mike
 

okanagan.mike

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Huzzah! We have success!

Long story short. My DIL uses Wind Mobile in Canada as her provider. Really cheap plans, but not an official iPhone network, so they don't sell iPhones, but you can bring your own. When all the steps everyone had suggested failed to work, I Googled "waiting for activation" and "wind" and found this site amongst others,

How-to: Activate iMessage and FaceTime on WIND Mobile for your iPhone - I'm Daniel. This is my Internet.

that details how to get the log data out of your phone to use on a second site which will then allow the activation to go through. The actual activation took just seconds.

Thanks for all the help provided by everyone.

Mike
 

noaim

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I have deleted her contact and rebuilt it from scratch. When I try a new iMessage, even when I first type her name, it shows up as green, and the message I compose is in a green bubble.

I am stumped!


iMessage has nothing to do with the contact in the phone.. all that needs to be is iMessage has to be turned on on both sides.

The actual content does not depict if you use iMessage or not. With iMessage turned on apples servers recognize it
 

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