Change telephone number in iMessage

I changed my network, and my mobile number recently. Had the old number in my iMessage preferences. All I needed to do, was turn iMessage off. Restart phone. Turn iMessage on.

No resetting or restoring.

I have face the problem as well. That's when change from Thailand SIM card to my Malaysia SIM card. The iMessage still showing the Thailand number. And activation failed.

The solution I found is to clear the cache of iPhone.

Normal reboot cannot clear it.

Turn off your iMessage and face time before proceed.

The steps as below:

1. Press power until the "slide to off" screen appear.

2. Release the power button and press the home button.

Hold it until it return back to the home screen. It may Flickr abit for some.

3. Your cache is clear. Now u can turn on your iMessage and it will show your current sim number. Activation should be in less than 1 minute.

Hopes this help.

i had tried all of the solutions in various combinations.

I contacted the Apple Store in Aberdeen and got the following:

• Go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Click on Apple ID and choose sign out.
• Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings
• Return to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Click on the Apple ID and sign in with you iCloud/iTunes account.

Follow this exact order and it worked first time for me.

To change the defult phone number in iMessage, you need to:

1. Insert the new sim.
2. Go to Settings > Messages>Turn off iMessage.
3. Go to General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.
4. Once the iPhone is open.
5. Go to Settings > Messages>Turn ON iMessage.
6. This will recognize the new sim and have it verified.

I hope this helps. I just did it like 5 mins. ago

Hello All,

Yes it is 2017 July, and problem still persist some people.

Solution came also not so easy to me. I have tried everything (having background in mac world), reading Apple information on subject, reading everyones suggestion and practical fixes, and trying this all, NOTHING HELPED.!

After two evenings playing with it (mean non stop and trying all posible things) - only thing has resolved my problem.

1. Sign out of imessages and facetime (but stay logged in with apple ID).

2. Change password of your apple id and log out all devices (there is option like that) - (not sure if that helped at the end can not say (but was done in due process).

3. log in to imessages with any other apple id, for ex: you sisters, mothers, brother - does not matter, just log in (aske them to do it) on your device. and log out on other devices form imessage and facetime manualy.

You will immediatley see new number apearing and all the id's of person you have logged in with.

4. Log out with alias ID from i messages and relogin with you apple ID to imessages and face time.

5. Log in (as you were logged out) on other devices - they will update info to new number (that worsk just fine).

Good luck.

I have the same problem. Activated a new iPhoto with Verizon and ported over my old number from AT&T, however had connection problems while the port took a day to go through, and in the meantime, VZW assigned me a temporary number. That number is still associated with iMessage.

I have:

1. switched iMessage on/off & reverified

2. restored from iTunes

3. wiped all settings and restored as new

4. wiped all network settings.

5. removed sim card, restarted phone, and reset network settings (interestingly, imessage still has the wrong number associated with it with sim card REMOVED leading me to believe this is truly an apple server problem...

apple support has thus far been unhelpful.

Chik, thank you.
i didn't even know to change FaceTime settings. while i didn't notice the old number under facetime, I turned both imessage and facetime off, restarted phone, and turned them both back on again. re-input my apple id password, and now both seem to be working fine. Facetime shows the phone number to use as my new number. I message still only shows email, but people i send messages to are confirming its coming through under my number, and not only from my apple id.

"

I changed my network, and my mobile number recently. Had the old number in my iMessage preferences. All I needed to do, was turn iMessage off. Restart phone. Turn iMessage on.

No resetting or restoring. "

This worked for me too 🙂

For me is not working, I changed my mobile number with the same carrier and the imessage shows the previous number (shadow gray) and not the new one, I'd try in many ways with no success.

Please help me out!

I've had a similar issue to all you guys... but my old number was with a different carrier. These methods worked for me (I used the “reset network settings” option).

I'm getting the suspicion that iMessages identifies with some ID on the sim card... and when people change their number with the same carrier they generally keep their old sim, so these methods don't work properly as iMessages & Facetime think it's the same account / number.

Although technically not a bug, it appears as though these apple systems make assumptions that don't always pay off.

None of the mentioned suggestions work for me. I tried resetting network settings, resetting all settings, change in DNS server, date/time setting but still nothing. It works for Apple ID but does not work on my phone no. It just keeps on showing my previous no in grey and veryfying. HELP! SOS! 😟

I had this problem. My phone was on Vodafone (UK) and now unlocked. When I changed sims iMessage and FaceTime wouldn't recognise my new number. I sorted this by;

SETTINGS-PHONE-MY NUMBER (add new number where it says 'unknown')

TURN OFF IMESSAGE AND FACETIME

TURN OFF THEN ON PHONE

TURN IMESSAGE AND FACETIME BACK ON

It came up as 'verifying' then HEY PRESTO! Sorted.

OK… I went traveling again to Malaysia at last month, and changed my sim card for 3 weeks. No problems with changing my phone number in iMessage and FaceTime using my above technique. See post:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3402546?answerId=16728799022#16728799022 above.

But when I returned home and put my Australian sim card into the iPhone, I had the problem everyone seems to have: can't change phone number in iMessage and Facetime. Activation would fail, and the in the iMessage settings, I could not change the phone number under "you can be reached for messages at:".

To clarify, I have an unlocked iPhone 4S 16GB. iOS 5.1.1.

I tried: changing Date & Time to automatically, restarting iPhone. USB plugging into computer to sync a few times. Didn't work.

The error I was getting was iMessage failed to activate, or something like that. iMessage was still working.

I was loathe to do a reset or get a new sim card, and decided to just live with it until iOS 6 was out. Maybe it was an iOS bug I thought. I could still send and receive messages, and was mostly doing this on my computer anyway.

But today, after 3 weeks in Australia, I turned on iMessage again, and it activated properly. I don't know how.

Aside from ignore the problem, the only thing I've done differently is change my iTunes Store Apple ID (linked to Australia) to the same one as my iMessage one. Normally, I use a different one (linked to USA). I seriously doubt this was even related, but that's the only thing I did. I had to do this temporarily to buy something from the iTunes Store Australia.

Again, once I could do this in iMessage, I could do so in Facetime as well (which was otherwise turned off).

Thank you so much to philg66!

I purchased my iPhone six used, and I couldn't get rid of the previous owner's phone number in the iMessage settings.

Your solution worked 100%.

Thank you for taking the time to post this.

I have searched Google for weeks until I found your answer.

Much obliged.

🙂➕➕➕

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philg66 wrote:

" i had tried all of the solutions in various combinations.

I contacted the Apple Store in Aberdeen and got the following:

• Go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Click on Apple ID and choose sign out.
• Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings
• Return to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Click on the Apple ID and sign in with you iCloud/iTunes account.

Follow this exact order and it worked first time for me. "

I solved this by completely wiping the iphone of all settings, (full reset) and setting up as a new iphone (not from a backup), and re-installing all my apps, setting up email accounts and connections, and only syncing contacts from icloud. After i did all this, i THEN turned imessage on, and now it only displays my apple ID in "receive messages at" and no phone number, either bad or good. i'm assuming things are fixed.

PERHAPS RELATED: during this process, resetting settings, switching imessage on/off, etc, i noticed that if i turned imessage off, all my messages would identify from the number that sent them, not the contact name. This was eventually corrected when i wiped clean and started over. However this weekend i had a connection problem in a low-signal area and couldn't send imessages, so i turned it off to be able to send as text instead. Once i turned imessage off, then on again, some messages in my messages list identified by numbers again, not their contact names.