Tap to download appearing in place of older photos

Hi all,

Today I noticed on my iPhone that some of older photos that were sent to me iMessage are no longer in the message threads. Tap to Download is in their place.

I had iCloud for iMessage set to off on my phone but switched it on to try and download the photos. I’ve had sporadic luck but I can’t use the facility where I click on the info button and click to download the photos that are stored in the cloud for each message thread. Some just won’t download.

I tried doing it individually tonight and I’m getting nowhere. Each photo starts to download and then I’m just left with an icon instead of the photo.

Its quite a mess! Should I switch on iCloud for messages again and do something from there?

Ive reset my network settings and signed out

and back into iMessage using my Apple ID. I’ve also done a hard reset.

Newer messages from today seem to be showing today’s photos as normal. It seems to be when I scroll back beyond the standard message roll where iMessage triggers a download of older images from previous days and beyond.

Thanks for your help!