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Iphone Problem with Setting Default Text Number

For a contact on my iphone, how does one set the default number for texts to be different from the default phone number?


Here is my situation: I have a contact who wants to be called on their landline (which is listed as home in the Contacts card). They also have an iPhone, whose number is listed as iPhone in the Contacts card. When I use the Contacts App to send them a message, Contacts will send the message to them using SMS rather than as an iMessage. I can't figure out how to change this.


Note: I am able to iMessage this contact, but to do so I either have to enter their iphone number directly in iMessage or (when using Contacts) manually change the default text number when I select them. The iPhone should be smarter than this. Is there some crazy parameter that is set wrong for the contact?


Thanks in advance!

iPhone 14 Pro

Posted on Nov 18, 2022 2:19 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 18, 2022 2:28 PM

I was able to solve my immediate issue but it's not a good solution, I think. It appears that my contact had an icloud account that wasn't linked to their iPhone number. When I deleted their icloud number from their Contact page, it started to work fine. I don't understand why this would have caused an issue, but the problem is resolved for me.


As a programmer, I think there is still a bug in Apple's code here.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 18, 2022 2:28 PM in response to pmondrian2022

I was able to solve my immediate issue but it's not a good solution, I think. It appears that my contact had an icloud account that wasn't linked to their iPhone number. When I deleted their icloud number from their Contact page, it started to work fine. I don't understand why this would have caused an issue, but the problem is resolved for me.


As a programmer, I think there is still a bug in Apple's code here.

Iphone Problem with Setting Default Text Number

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