How can you switch between text message and iMessage on a specific contact?

Hey, to resolve this: just touch the phone icon, touch the contacts tab, select desired contact, go to the bottom of the page and push on send message >> to send as imessage: click on the e-mail address (if there is no email you have to add one) to send as sms click on the number. P.S. : if you click on the number and it takes you to send as an imessage>> send it, then hold the message bubble and then select "send as text message". KEEP IN MIND IMESSAGE SHOULD BE ALWAYS ON !! that's all.🙂

What's frustrating is that I have an iPad and and iPod Touch, but no iPhone. I sometimes miss messages when I've been having an iMessage chat back and forth with someone's iPhone, and then (later) they try to text me by just continuing the existing conversation. I guess the different colors used for iMessage vs. SMS are a good clue... my iPhone-using friends will just have to get used to noticing that visual cue.

This is what I understand about iMessage...

When you turn iMessage for a particular iDevice on or off, you are registering/unregistering that unique hardware with apple's servers.

As long as there is still at least 1 "registered" iDevice for a given AppleID, the Send button will always be blue on all other iDevices attemping to send a text message to said "registered" AppleID.

The way to prevent issues when discarding an iMessage-enabled iDevice is to turn off iMessage BEFORE turning off or discarding the iDevice.

If you haven't, you'll want to find the old iDevice, sign in as your AppleID and turn iMessage off. If for some reason iMessage is already in the off state, turn it on and then back off.

The only way to switch that contact back to iMessage once you've switched it to SMS is to erase the history (delete the entire name from the text message list) and then recreate it again.

Ok i had to sign in just to reply to this post since i felt bad cuz i spend alot of time looking for the same answer. Anyway this worked for me and i tested it one again before writing.

I had similar situation where i couldnt imessage my girlfriend but that message being important i didnot care just send it as text.

Next thing i know my phone started sending all msgs as text and not imessage.

To cut long story short the way you can go back from text to imessage is go open your conversation with that person, scroll all the way up in the conversatiion, click facetime and hangup (you do not have to facetime with the person its like a sec and hangup before they get an invite) this way your iphone tries to facetime and understands that the other user is an iphone user and changes from text message to imessage. Works for me let me know if it does for you tooo.

Worked perfect, thanks!

I've also noticed that if my iPhone has switched to sending text messages instead of iMessages then if I send an iMessage from my iPad it causes the iPhone to switch back to sending iMessages and copies the iMessage from the iPad to the message thread on the iPhone. It seems a very indirect way of achieving something that the iPhone should take care of. I was in the position where I was abroad, an iMessage delivery failed because I had lost connection, the iPhone switched to sending text messages which also failed as I only had national calls included in my plan and i was sending calls to an international number. So I was in a situation where I could not send a message from my iPhone at all. To test that the recipient was still connected I sent an iMessage using my iPad and noted the behaviour above.

I stumbled across the feature of the iPhone where u can set one contact to only send text even if the other iPhone user has I message enabled it Is done when u compose a message to that person you can push and hold on the send button for 5 seconds this will bring up a message asking to switch to text/SMS.

This only happens if the contact is contactable via iMessage and SMS.

Hope this helps.

david from Brisbane wrote:

I stumbled across the feature of the iPhone where u can set one contact to only send text even if the other iPhone user has I message enabled it Is done when u compose a message to that person you can push and hold on the send button for 5 seconds this will bring up a message asking to switch to text/SMS.

This only applies to the specific message. It does not set the contact to SMS permanently.

This did not work for me. Using iOS 5.1.1

Send out the message as iMessage, after that click on the text just sent and a baloon will be shown asking if you wish to send as SMS!

Just an additional tip, you have to be quick and click on message before it has been sent, I mean, before you get the log as delivered.

If you go the contact you are having issues with - you should see their cell phone number may also be listed as iPhone (I had a contact with two Mobile Phone and IPhone) I clicked on Edit and Deleted the iPhone one - now it works. She had an iPhone, but now does not! This was driving me nuts because I would never see it went as an iMessage until I wondered why there was no response. Hope this helps!

I have had the same issue trying to send a text message - to a person that no longer has an iphone. I deleted the contact completely and tried just the phone number and it still kept coming us as an iMessage. Something is definitely wrong with the iphone/service recognizing the number!

The issue is not with the contact setup on your device, but rather that the person you are sending too did not disable iMessage before they stopped using their iPhone.