iMessage sent from email address rather than phone number...

I had the exact same problem. I looked everywhere on the Internet and even asked my friends. My imessaging wouldnt come up under my number only my email and it was fairly annoying. BUT I figured it out somewhat.. For me Turning off my iphone fixed the problem. I went back into messaging and my email wasnt under the reciepitents only m phone number was. wala! I hoped that helped

I think you have to delete existing conversations with the person that recieves your email adress/Apple ID in as the sender. And that person also have to delete any existing conversations with you.

It is explained in this note: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3529

Additional Information

• You can change the address that new iMessage conversations are started with in Settings > Messages > Send & Receive > Start new conversations from:. Note that this setting applies only to new conversations. If you would like to change the address from which messages are sent, first change this setting, and then delete the existing conversation and start a new one.
• iMessage responses will be sent from the address the recipient most recently messaged. For example, a friend sends you a message to your Apple ID. Responses in this conversation will be sent from your Apple ID, even if you've selected new conversations to start from your phone number.
  

/Kjell

I had the same issue but none of the solutions mentioned above worked for me. I realized that my phone number under Settings->phone was entered with the +prefix and country code. Just removing this and entering the plain number starting with 0 made it work. (however, putting the prefix and country code back in, it still works as it should. Strange bug.)

So here's the über answer for all this nonsense that is Apple iMessage

When you sign into iMessage (on an iphone) using your apple ID. It does 2 things.

It not only registers your phone number as an iMessage device but also the email address as well.

Good? Ok.

So under Settings>Messages>Receive At

You should have your phone # AND your Apple ID email. These are all of the address (so far) that iMessage will use as your device address (so to speak). So if your friend, neighbor, boyfriend, cousin, baby-mama or whoever uses an iDevice to send a message to this address "ding" you get a message.

Settings>Messages>Receive At>Caller ID

Is where when you send an I message to an iDevice and they dont yet have you programmed into their phone as a contact THIS WILL BE YOUR CALLER ID. so change it accordingly. iPhone users will probably want to make this their phone number. Other iDevice users will have a choice between different emails not a number if it's a pod or pad or Mac.

If you send an iMessage to a non iPhone iDevice your email will be used as caller ID instead (because they dont have a wireless number associated)

IF YOU LOSE DATA SERVICE EVERY NOW AND THEN, THEN THIS PART WILL MAKE LOTS OF SENSE

If you originally start an iMessage using an iPhone users email and not phone number, then for whatever reason if you don't have data at the time of your message it will send it as an email NOT A TEXT. It does not revert back to their default number even if it's stored into your contacts.

So if you are in the mountains or under a bridge and you have crap for service aka no data only cellular and you send an iMessage it will go to that persons email address that you originally used to start the conversation from something like 5595551234@mms.att.net NOT THEIR WIRELESS NUMBER AND WILL NOT SHOW UP IN IMESSAGE.

It's dumb but I figured it out this while AppleCare was scratching their head last night.

Settings>Messages>Send As SMS

This is the exact opposite of the conundrum from above and is more straight forward. If you don't have data when you send a message to an iMessage users phone number then it will send as a text message and cost u money if it isn't unlimited or whatever. So unclick if you are a text fiend with a low text plan.

hope that covers 99% of the questions about iMessage.

GOOD LUCK!

I had this problem for 3 months now. And I finally figured it out. If what has been posted does not work, you probably had the same problem I had. If you shut log out of your apple ID and that doesnt work for you and it still seems to be sending from your email address you need to go into your apple ID account and make sure you have verified your cell phone number!!!!! Mine was not listed under mobile number. Once I added my mobile number to my apple ID account Tada magic I started getting imessage with my number not my email. You can still have your email address listed you will not have to delete it. Hope this helps I know it did for me !!!!

How to solve iMessage sent as an email address rather than phone number:

Found a fix by .Gru that worked for me:

Goto Settings, Messages, Receive at, sign out of your apple ID

Thats it!

If you are signed in, it will use your email by default rather than your phone number.

Signing out refers it back onto your number instead. Now all messages are from the one sender.

Problem solved! Hope this helps

Aye guys,

Well, at first it was an issue for me; trying to get my number verifyied in both, but after sometime I got it all figured out.

To activate iMessage with you phone number: Sign out of your apple ID, make sure you have sufficient airtime in your iPhone (as iMessage will need to access your carrier to verify your cell phone number), both FaceTime and iMessage should be OFF.

Turn iMessage ON first then you'll be prompted with a pop-up message requiring you to either Accept (OK) or Cancel iMessage's activation through your carrier. Accept, or, in other human language, press OK. You should see it activating ...

Back off from iMessage to FaceTime. Do the same procedure as the one we did for iMessage and you will have both activated and both using your cell phone number.

*You can add your email afterwards in the "Receive at" for iMessage and "Add email" for FaceTime.

Cheers.

Sign out of all your apple account including Facetime, iMessage, iCloud, Appstore and turn off home sharing. Restart phone. Resign back into all of them.

iOS and OS X: Link your phone number and Apple ID for use with FaceTime and iMessage

There's also the "Caller ID" setting under "Receive At" under the "Messages" setting. You can change that to your phone number or one of the email addresses you've set up for iMessages, so you can control how you show up to other folks.

What I am curious about is, how do I know if what I'm sending is coming from my number as a text message or as an iMessage with my Apple ID. I'm really asking this specifically because, I have friends overseas who I have been texting..now we have iMessenger.. but how do I know it's not being sent as a text instead (therefore costing me money)? Just because it's being sent using their email?

I've used a Blackberry before, and they have their texting & BBM as two seperate applications with two seperate icons...kinda hoping Apple had done the same here :/

Any help would be great thanks 😀

I turned off iMessage, went out of settings, back into settings, turned on iMessage and it fixed two problems. A) I got the "Receive At" setting (wasn't there before) and it suddenly loaded my phone number in addition to my email address for Receive At so I was able to chose that under the Caller ID. Worked great. Thanks.

I had the same problem, I would send iMessages to my gf, and it would come up as my email address. I told her to add my email address to my contact info an now it shows up as my name instead of email.

I've had this problem as well.

I had it "waiting for authorization" for a couple days and it was only going through my email.

Not only it was going through my email, but I could not receive any SMS text from anyone unless they had ios5 and was using iMessage.

I was sick of this problem and tried ALL of the methods, called AT&T (don't even bother trying because they don't know what the issue is) as well as Apple (don't bother because even their senior advisor didn't even know) and went to the Genius Bar the next day. Fixed the problem in 20 minutes. They basically told me something about my software didn't have some sort if "ID" thing (I forgot what she said) and so she had to do a hard reset from their computer and so it all ended up working out fine.

Problem solved.

PS Don't bother calling AT&T because it has nothing to do with their service or anything on their end. And Apple would put you on hold for like 30 minutes before you even get a response from someone who probably didn't even know about this problem.