iPhone says iMessage needs to be enabled to send this message

Settings>messages>imessage

check iMessage toggle is on and then within that line item check that you’re send/receive options are as desired for whether you use just your Apple ID, an email address, your phone number or some combination to send and receive.

And check that you’re not just using a cell number only while in airplane mode, causing a temporary failure to function or something like that.

If you can't send or receive messages on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

If you can't send or receive photos and videos in messages

Make sure that your device has enough space to receive images and videos.

If you use SMS or MMS messaging to send photos or videos, your carrier may set size limits for attachments. Larger files may take more time to send, and your iPhone can compress photo and video attachments when necessary. If you experience an issue when you try to send full size images, you can manually send lower quality images:

1. In the Settings app, tap Messages.
2. Tap Low Quality Image Mode.

Well, thanks for even responding. Sometimes you ask a question on a form and it never gets answered or you give an answer and it never gets commented on. Appreciate taking even a minute. So by the way, did it happen to solve your problem. Sometimes the smallest oversight in a simple step or toggle that changes with a software update to a new default or any number of things can quickly change the normal behavior to other than what you’re used to, and can be resolved with taking the steps to review the things that are taken for granted as remaining correct. But if it didn’t help, I’m interested because maybe I could provide other ideas.

by the way, this may be an important tidbit for you as well. There might be a solution that even I don’t know, but if I send a video and a number of photographs to friends with iPhones, I can send them as a group selected from the photos app or various ways we’re probably both familiar with.

However, if I try to send several photos and a video together to an android user I get a message I think about iMessage or a failure to send.

So I can send several photos to an android user using iPhone message app however I need to separately send the video as a single item. I’m not sure how long this has been going on or if it always has been the case but send a video to an android user from my iPhone or iPad it would seem that needs to be sent by and with photographs or other videos

experiment with that, and if you’re inclined to share your personal findings, I’m interested because that has less to do with the iMessage settings and toggles in my experience, but I’m not sure what the reason is it doesn’t work when I have SMS checked as a fallback and all the options that would seem relevant I still need to send videos to android users or not combination. That may be a second limitation that requires calling Apple to ask why if that’s the case even if you have your settings correct. ( 1 800 – myApple) and select or say technical support for your device type and the prompts route you to a support agent.

i’ve never called about it because more of my contacts are iPhone users and it only occasionally stings me where I have to remember to separate and send separately. It’s also been announced that they will be a new form of messaging. It is more universal to send full-size videos and content phone platforms such as Apple and android coming this fall with the release of iOS and iPadOS 18. Check out some tubes on that from WWDC or other peoples summary explanations of how that can work already using the beta versions of the software that became available June 2024. That may change and enhance certain aspects of how you use the messaging app on your Apple device with all contacts, particularly non-Apple contacts with feature enhancements or functional upgrades and capabilities for cross platform communication