How do I consolidate iMessages and texts into one conversation?

I'm having the same problem. When I receive messages from my friend, SMS and iMessages are separated into two different conversations; frustrating is the word. From his point of view, everything appers to be as it should - messages from me end up in the same conversation.

We have compared our settings and they appear to be the same. The only difference we have found is that I have added his phone number with the label "mobile" and he has added my number as "iPhone".

Before I saw that you had posted the same question, I created another thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3377368

Having the same issue....txting and imessaging someone who has an ipad on iOS 5 and a phone without.........these should consolidate

Again, Im having similar issues, but from one out of three friends... only difference is his phone is an iPhone 3GS, and the rest of us have iPhone 4's. not 4S's 😉.

Its not a big deal, but is just frustrating. It's nice to have everything "just work".

Okay I got the solution why this is happening. When the person has only his or her email as receive in the iMessage setting, then you get a new chat window because you only chat with him or her via email. So the person has to add his or her phone number in the receive settings, but I don't know why.

Because the phone number is associated with texting. You cannot sms a person that has an ipod or ipad because they do not have a phone number. Also it probably has to do with your phone and how you associate it with icloud. That is my best guess as to what is happening.

We compared our settings once we understood that something was strange. Everything seems to be the same and we both have added our emails and phone numbers as receive in the iMessage settings.

I´m glad that we are not the only ones suffering from this problem.

Just to be sure we are all experiencing the same problem; do your settings look like mine? (see my thread below)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3398087?answerId=16404129022#16404129022

My settings looks just like yours, BUT now it works! I noticed it yesterday. If I create a new message and start to type the name of my friend (which I previously had problems with) a blue bubble appears next to his phone number; previously the bubble only appeared next to his email adress.

I have not changed any settings, so it might be the case that it will start working on its own after a while. Good luck guys!

I'm also having this problem and my settings are like the ones posted above. My wife's iPhone 3GS lumps all of her texts/iMessages into one conversation distinguished by different color bubbles and titles. However, my iPhone 4 separates her conversations depending on whether they are to her phone number or iMessage email.

Everything for her is under one contact entry, which I tried deleting and re-creating from scratch. It didn't help. I also deleted all text conversations between she and I. Didn't work.

If I use something like Dialvetica to send her a text, it will use her phone number, but the entry box detects it as an iMessage. She'll get that text under her consolidated text conversation. She replies to me and it shows up as a new text conversation on my phone. I can continue to use that email conversation, but as soon as I initiate an iMessage using her number it switches back to that conversation.

So, there's two dofferent conversation for phone number and email on mine, whereas on hers it's all shown as one.

@zxfiles: If you create a new message and enter your wife's name, is there a blue bubble next to her phone number or her email address?

When I had the same problem, the blue bubble was next to my friend's email address and not his phone number. Now when things work, the bubble is next to his phone number instead. I didn't do anything special, it just worked one day!

I wonder if it has something to do with Apple's servers, perhaps all information hasn’t propagated through their systems? So the number and Apple ID isn’t linked together, but that's just a guess.

Hi JMelin,

when you had your problem fixed by itself, did the two separated message threads (the sms and the iMessage one) merged by themself or did you deleted all the messages? I have the same problem of many, but i think it's a problem related to the receiver of the messages. I think that there is one task only that the messages app and the address book have to do: if the address book see that the phone number and the iMessage came from the same contact, then the message app should merge the thread.

I don't think that the problem is related to the sender phone configuration. I have the same problem with one contact who have more e-mail address on his profile. While i don't have problem from contact that have one e-mail address only...

I have a 4S but my messages are being split on my 2 friends' 3GS phones...

The issue is that I do not receive all of their messages and they don't get all of mine. There must be an issue with the way the old phones handle the iMessage contact.

Here is my thread about it... https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3584979

Hello,

check from the messages options if you are sending the messages using your phone number as ID or your e-mail in case you are logged with your apple_id. If they receive your message splitted, probably you are using your e-mail as your id, instead of the phone number. There is no way to merge the messages for them.

As for the second issue i can tell you that there must be a bug somewhere. Some days ago i didn't receive iMessages from two friends. We figured it out hours later.

Now: if the iPhone can't send message via iMessage service, it automatically SHOULD send it again as a normal SMS after a while. This didn't happen to me, indeed after hours and hours (5 hour for one and 20 for my other friend) they notice that the iMessage delivery was not confirmed.

So why the iPhone didn't sent automatically the same message as a normal sms? I think that the iPhone don't sent the sms automatically unless it receive a confirmation from the iMessage server that the delivery is not possible. That's why my two friends had still the iMessage on a "waiting status" without confirmation and why sometimes the times that go from when you send an iMessage and when it get converted to an sms is variable. I had problems in the past sending iMessages: one time they where converted to an sms in one minute, other time they took 5 minutes, and under the Christmass holiday (i think because traffic) the iPhone sent it after 15 minutes. The day after indeed i had problem receiving iMessages too.

Thats why i think that it's a server side problem, about the iPhone handling the delivery status with the server. I wonder why the iPhone doesn't decide himself to revert a message to a normal sms and i think the answer is to avoid duplicated. If you sent an iMessage, and the server is stuck and your phone decide to send it via cell tower without telling it to the iMessage server, then when the server is free the recipient may have a double boring message...

For now you or your friend can just pay attention to the delivery status of the iMessages.

Sorry for the lenght, hope it can help.