How to register number with iMessage

What number? A phone number? The iPad does not have a phone number.

Chapter 6 of your user guide (bookmarked in Safari by default) will explain how to use the message app. To send to a phone number, you need to have that in your contacts.

If you're on an iPad, you might want to go with enabling your email to receive iMessages. If you mean how to find which contacts are using iMessage, try to send them one, it works automatically as far as I can remember.

If you want to get your phone to work with iMessage then you're on the wrong section but it's quite easy too, just go to settings, and in the Messages menu switch iMessage to the On position. At the bottom you can select where you want iMessage to deliver.

Hi,

I also has this problem. My wife and I both have iPads using the same iTunes account (mine). Seeing as they are the 3G versions, I was wondering if there is a way of setting up iMessage to accept messages sent to the sim card numbers inserted into the iPads.

Currently iMessage doesn't recognise these numbers as a iMessage compatible numbers and I have to rely on using the E-Mail addresses which most of the time prove to be problematic.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a "how to guide" etc. So I can link the phone numbers to the iPads with Apple?

With Thanks,

Dave G

You cannot do that. While the SIM may have what appears to be a phone number, since your iPad is not, actuall a phone, the data service provider does not provision that number to function over their phone exchanges. Bottom line is an iPad does not have a working phone number and there is no way to give it one.

Hi,

Thank you for the quick response. The sim card I have in the iPad is a standard "pay n go" sim card with a "data bolt on". If the sim card is placed into any phone, the sim card works as expected to make and receive calls etc.

I get what you mean about the iPad as I was a little disappointed by the lack of calling and/or messaging. Especially when their main competitors allow the use of SMS etc.

The issue I have is that iMessage, for some reason, shows the messages as being sent from the recieving mail address. So a iMessage being sent to a.person@a.place.co.uk shows up on a.persons iPad as being sent from themselves. Although both iPads are linked to the same iTunes account, the address are different to the address used to set up iTunes. Hence the question regarding the sim cards number.

Still, no worries and thank you all the same for replying :)

With Thanks,

Dave G

Do you mean the two iMessage apps are using the same AppleID? If so, they are sharing the same iMessage account, regardless of what other deliverable phone number or email address are associated with it. The primary iMessage account ID is the AppleID used, anything else really is little more than aliases as that AppleID defines the primary iMessage account and userid.

You can create unique AppleIDs just for iMessage, and still use the shared iTunes AppleID for everything else.

P.S. even though you use the same SIM card, it knows from the IMEI and hardware address of the device that one is a cellular phone, and the other is a data-only device. The carrier's system knows exactly what is connecting to it's network and provisions the connection accordingly - data services for data only devices, voice and data for phones.