Spinning Wheel After Contacts Name in Messages App

So it wouldn’t let me reply to an old thread about this same issue.

The issue is, for contacts that have multiple phone numbers, when you go to create a new message in the message app to text them, you enter the name, select them and the name has a spinning wheel next to it. Sometimes it “loads” and you can text. Other times it hangs there.

The workaround was to manually select the exact phone number you wanted.

Well I found a potential bug. Some of my contacts are very old. I had commas listed after the number as this was an old way of doing a pause then the extension number would automatically dial.

It seems commas in any contact numbers mess it all up and when you go to send a new message to the contact it won’t select the proper number automatically and gets stuck with the spinning wheel.

This all started when Apple introduced the feature where iMessage could automatically send contact image and info to others. It must poll or something every time it messages when you create a new message. Somehow these commas mess things all up.

To test: I deleted commas and it worked fine. I added commas to other contacts and those screwed up.

Hopefully this can help others with the same issue.