Force iMessage to send an SMS?

I can understand the frustation... ongoing issue for me when I am out of my service provider's area and I have no data connection. My Iphone friends continue to send "blue" Imessages which I do not recieve until I have wifi connection. If the Ipad in the hotel, it sends the message to the Ipad while I am elsewhere waiting. grrrrr. I have to make sure my ipad is offline when I am away, which prevents anyone else from using it. Realistically I can NOT ask my friends and associates to now switch off Imessage on thier devices just because I happen to be out of country.

Rustygee wrote:

If the Ipad in the hotel, it sends the message to the Ipad while I am elsewhere waiting. grrrrr. I have to make sure my ipad is offline when I am away,

No you don't. Just sign out of iMessage.

This is great and works, but most people just send the text without considering or fussing to see if the message was sent in blue or green mode, they just turn RED waiting for your reply. Some users are not going to ever be concerned or techy enough, they just want a reliable system that works everytime without fuss, as Apple devices are known for. Well most of the time.

Case in point, I am texting with a friend this morning, about five exchanges, all of sudden I am not receiving any replies, I think he must be busy. Meanwhile my Ipad which is a home NOT connected to WiFi, no wiFi at the cabin. I take this Ipad to the coffee shop a few hours later, to read email, all of a sudden all the message from my friend start arrving, as being sent at 10;02, around the time I was texting to him earlier...

In this case the Imessage system waited two hours and rather than sending it SMS, as it did the rest of the text messages, it somehow decided in a middle of a conversation to send the rest of the messages via Imessage and since I was not on the internet I never received them. That's enough to drive anyone mad... I love apple products, and I am big supporter with every gadget out there primarly because of thier consistant reliable features, but the iMessage system when I am off the internet is very very annoying and impossible to solve thus far. As a techy most if not all I am able to solve technical issues, this one is totally unpredicable.

While in Canada most of the time I am NOT connect to wifi, as my service provider is in the US, Sprint. When I return the US the system is flawless, only because I have a DATA plan. When I off the Intenet grid... the problems begin, even with very strong Celluar connections, I might add.

Peace

Rusty Gardiner

<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Rustygee wrote:

In this case the Imessage system waited two hours and rather than sending it SMS, as it did the rest of the text messages

Messages is the app.

iMessage system does not send SMS. SMS is up to the carrier.

iMessages are ONLY data over cell or wifi. They have nothing to do with an SMS/text plan.

While in Canada most of the time I am NOT connect to wifi, as my service provider is in the US, Sprint.

Do you mean while in Canada most of the time you are not connnected to cellular?

Sprint has nothing to do with you connecting to wifi.

While in Canada I am almost aways connected to Cellular, although with DATA turned off. On roaming for cellular only.

My only concern is to reliably recieve text messages from other apple Iphones. It is not conisistent, I sometime recieved messages on my iphone from other Iphone users. What setting do I need to do to ensure I recieve ALL message from iphone users.

While I am in Canada I am not on a DATA plan, i can only recieved sms message, not imessage (blue) unless I am connect via WiFi. Can you explain what I need to do to ensure that I will recieve all text messages. While i am connected to Cellular of course... While traveling 99% of the time I have a strong cellular signal. So that is not the issue. The text conversations with other non-iphone users are flawless, never an issue, 100%. Ironically it only with other apple users who are using Imessage, that is the problem. The phone itself or what ever system decides that if I am not available in the internet to recieve an the text in imessage form, it should send me the message via SMS. The system that decides this is flawed, as sometimes it works good, it will send via SMS when imessage is not available, but not always. That is the concern. Now how do I we fix this.. Reading the comments online, (apple support) this is not an isolated issue, its rather common actually.

Thank you by the way for responding... much appreciated. thanks.

Rustygee wrote:

While in Canada I am almost aways connected to Cellular, although with DATA turned off. On roaming for cellular only.

Then you will not receive any iMessages (until you get on wifi).

My only concern is to reliably recieve text messages from other apple Iphones.

Turn off iMessages in Settings > Messages. iDevice users can send only SMS (not iMessage) to you.

I have had imessage off on my phone for a while, but I will try turning it off the Ipad as well.

Thank you again for the response.. much appreciated, I hope it solves the problem.

hi, i have an inquiry about imessenger regarding changing between different data types. posted this in a new thread, but received no feedback and i think that this conversation is the closest to what is happening to me:

when i am in the middle of an imessenger conversation and my phone is on 3g, then i go into the settings and switch 3g off, there is little delay of 2-3 minutes till imessenger receives again and i continue teh conversation normally.

however, when i am on 2g in the middle of imessenger conversation, and i exit and go into settings and switch on 3g, then simply exit everything and lock the phone and wait for up to 7 minutes, the phone doesn't receive the imessenger. i have to unlock the phone and go into teh mesasges, open the i messenger conversation, then all teh messages are receive.

i have iphone 4 running ios 6.3.1 and i don't have multiple device and i only receive imessenger on the phone number, not on e-mail.

it is a little weird test, but i was jsut wondering what happens if i am in teh middle of a conversation and move from a 2g zone to 3g zone?

why doesn't it automatically pick up teh new connection if the phone is idle? i have to go into the messages, see the "send" icon switch to blue again then it starts receiving the mesasges that were sent to me during the data switching.

Maybe you should post in your original, 40-minute old thread again, to bump it up to the top, instead of bumping a two month old thread?

thanks, i am jsut not very familiar with how this goes. so i thought maybe it is better if i ask in a live conversation.

thanks for the advice

This trick doesn't seem to work on iOS7 anymore? If I tap hold on a blue colored iMessage I've sent I get two options: "Copy and More". Copy just copies the text to the clipboard and More just opens the edit mode where I can select one or more messages and delete them all at once.

The option "Send as Text message" is nowhere to be found.

Am I doing something wrong?

It's probably working correctly for you.

The option is still there in iOS 7 but I have noticed that it only appears if the iMessage has not yet been 'delivered' to any of the recipient's devices. So the option will not appear if the message has been delivered to one of the devices associated with the recipient's phone number, even if they have not read the message - because the device they have with them is out of range.

If you have 'send as SMS' enabled in Settings>General>iMessage, undelivered iMessages should automatically be sent as SMS after about 5 minutes.

The limitation of this behaviour is that it only helps in situations where iMessages have not been delivered to ANY of the recipient's devices associated with their phone number. Imagine a situation where the recipient's iPad is switched on at home and recieves the message, but their iPhone is out of range of a data connection so they can't read the message. In this situation the 'send as SMS' option will not appear.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for your prompt answer. Very helpful indeed. I see Apple's logic and it's almost always flawless except indeed for the scenario you depicted. My girlfriend's mother is abroad right now (data roaming turned off) but her iPad is still at home with a connection. So I'm able to send iMessages right now even though she won't be able to read them unless she either turns on data roaming or connects to a wifi hotspot. A minor inconvenience alas.

The only way to really being able to force send a text is to disable iMessages altogether but that's not really something one would like to do on a daily basis of course.

Thanks for your clarification nonetheless.

It happened to me just after I switch to IOS 7 as prior to that it automatically changes to SMS text if recipient has no wifi available. I noticed my mom is no longer getting my texts as their wifi at home is busted. So I checked my settings and I turned on "Send as SMS" option as it says enabling it will send text as SMS when iMessage is unavailable. tested it and it worked.