Turn off iMessage for individual contacts

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Level 1

14 points

Turn off iMessage for individual contacts

Hi there,

I have a person in my contacts that uses an android phone, but they also have an iPad.

The only contact info I have for them in my contacts app is their name and phone number. No email address. Yet somehow, instead of sending sms texts, it always defaults to sending an iMessage instead. Every time I text them, they say they don’t get it, because it got sent to their iPad, not their phone.

I don’t see an option to disable iMessage for a single contact. I can turn off Wi-Fi and data and let the text fail and use the ‘send as text message’ option, but that’s just not feasible if you’re having a long conversation and/or you’re texting more than one person.

I’m probably missing an option somewhere. Anyone know how to fix this?

Posted on Oct 30, 2020 11:23 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Axel Foley

Level 10

149,508 points

Oct 30, 2020 11:33 AM in response to dannycmaia

You can try the following-

Delete the contact entirely
Delete the ongoing iMessage thread that you have with your friend
Reboot your iPhone
Set up the contact of your friend and without the email address. Just the phone number.
YOU start a new SMS message thread in a fresh window

See whether the above takes care of the issue.

Axel F.

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Answer 2

dannycmaia Author

Level 1

14 points

Oct 30, 2020 12:10 PM in response to Axel Foley

That did it!

Sent them a text, color is green, all is good. So good so far.

Hopefully they don’t mess it up by sending me a text from their iPad! 😅

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Answer 3

Axel Foley

Level 10

149,508 points

Oct 30, 2020 12:40 PM in response to dannycmaia

Good Point. If your friend sends you an iMessage from the iPad then it will come to you as an iMessage but then it should be in a separate window because you do not have your friend's email address in the contact.

What you can do is create another contact and name it something like "John's iPad" and ONLY list the email address. Then you will for sure have two separate windows. Make sure that, if you do this, then the contact name is not the same (so add iPad in the end).

Axel F.

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Answer 4

Oct 30, 2020 11:41 AM in response to dannycmaia

By the sounds of it this person never de-registered their phone number from Apple's servers for iMessage. Ask them to go to this link and submit their phone number:

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

Once they do that, they may need to sign out of iMessage on their iPad and then sign back in.

On your end, once they've done this it should clear up. If not, you can temporarily turn off iMessage on your iPhone and then send them a text, which of course will go out as SMS and may "teach" your iPhone to do that from now on. Then of course turn iMessage back on and try again.

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Turn off iMessage for individual contacts

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