Why do I keep getting 923-0 messages when trying to text?

All:

Don't know if this will work for you, but it worked for me on my iPhone 4s:

1) I deleted and re-entered the contact

2) Sending text message failed as described by others

3) I scanned all archived messages and deleted all messages to/from that contact

4) Sent another text message - succeeded.

It appears the erroneous meta data remains in the database until the message is deleted. I can't remember, but it is possible we entered the contact based on the phone number of the text message coming in. It will be interesting to see whether the problem recurs next time they send a message and we try to respond, or whether the problem is now permanently fixed. Good luck to all driven crazy by this problem!!!

Thank you cookiebug in particular!! that was simple and worked - iphone 5 - virgin mobile (have to get all contact traces out and shut down and power on!)

This was seriously a life saver. Thank you so much for posting!! Fantastic. Anyone reading, please try this.

This worked for me and seemed a little easier than cookiebug's:

1. Dial ##873283#

2. Clear the messages to whoever you're trying to text AND the 9230 alert messages.

3. Turn off your phone for 2 minutes.

4. Turn back on and send your text!

Hi all,

Thank you for all of the suggested fixes! I am glad to know that I am not the only one dealing with this very frustrating issue. I've tried all of the fixes mentioned above and am still receiving the 923-0 error message. Seems to happen with only a few numbers I try to text, one being my husband's number (who does not have an iPhone). I spoke to Sprint Customer Service about it many months ago. At their sugguestion , I deleted all of my text messages and re-entered the contact -- that worked for about one day, then the messages appeared again when I tried to text that contact. Yesterday, I went to the Sprint store for service. They tried a few things and then told me that they wanted to do a hard reset on my phone which would delete all but my contacts. I'm hesitant to try that since some of the above comments indicate that this won't help either.

So, I guess my question is -- any other suggestions? I have an iPhone 4. If not, are there other messaging apps that work between a smart phone and an Android phone? It's not critical that I'm able to text my husband, although it sure would be convenient!

All: Happened again to my wife with her iPhone 4. This time I went to Utilities->Settings->Messages and disabled iMessage. Worked right away! Just before, I had deleted messages, deleted and added contact, didn't work. I noticed that failure always accompanied the notation "iMessage" at the top vs. "Text Message". Hope this helps some folks!

Hi All,

This was bothering me for months with a friend's number. I searched through a lot of these Apple forums, howard-forums, even android forums discussing the 923-0 return error.

This error also followed form my iPhone 4 to my iPhone 5S.

With some of the advice from this thread, here is what FINALLY worked for my iPhone.

1. Open the Phone app and check if the contact is in Favorites. If they are press Edit and remove that contact from Favorites.
   
2. Go to the next tab in Phone app which is Recents. Scroll from the top all the way to the bottom and remove the call log with the problematic contact.
   
3. Go to the Voicemail tab and remove any voicemails from that contact.
   
4. Now leave the Phone app and open Messages app. You will need to delete your entire conversation history with the contact. In iOS7 this is annoyingly easy, you just swipe left and delete. In older version you will need to press Edit and then remove the Messages conversation with that contact.
   
5. In addition to step four, you will also want to swipe to the top of Messages to get the Search field, and search for that contact's name. Now, go down and remove and Group Messages that had that contact in it. So in the end here, you will have ZERO text messages or Group Messages to the problem contact.
   
6. Now, go to the Contacts app and find your problem contact. The easiest thing is to remove them, but if you have a lot of other information in the contact card, you can first try just deleting the Phone Number from their contact card. In additional safety step that I did here, but is not required, is I then logged in to iCloud.com and opened the Contacts Webapp to ensure that the problem phone number was removed from the contact.
   
7. Now, leave the Messages app and open the Settings app. Scroll down to Messages settings and open that. Turn off iMessage. Turn off MMS messaging.
   
8. Press the Home button to go back to your app home screen. Now double-click your Home button to bring up your background running applications. You want to quit all running applications. In iOS7 you swipe upwards on each app "card" to quit it. On older iOS version you will hold down on any running app's icon in the running app tray (bottom of the screen) until it starts wiggling. Then press the little red "X" circle and that will quit the app. If a screen pops up asking "do you want to delete this app" press Cancel. That means you did not click an app from the Backround Apps tray. Just try double-clicking home and try again.
   
9. Now that all apps have quit, just press home again to exit the Background Apps tray. Now press and hold you power button for a few second until a slider drops over the screen that says "swipe to power off" and move the slider over to turn off your phone.
   
10. After your phone screen is completely off, leave the phone off for about a minute. After a minute has passed, press the Power button once to turn it back on. The apple logo will appear while it is booting up.
    
11. Now that you are back at your app home screen, open the Messages app. Press the Compose Message button to write a new conversation. In the TO: field enter the phone number that had been causing the problem texts. Send a message to that contact and watch it send through!
    
12. Now to put things back, return to your Settings app, scroll to Messages settings and open it. Turn your iMessage and MMS messages back on, and then return your home screen.
    
13. Lastly, you can go to Contacts app and add the number (with the area code!) to your original contact. If you had deleted it, just create a new contact card and add their phone number to it.
    

Some of these steps may be extra and unnecessary, but I tried so many guides before this that were nearly as long and they did not work, so I feel it's better to be thorough in my guide.

Best of luck!

Worked for me! Thanks so much, jeffed.

Was very hopeful this would do the trick, but no luck. I've tried everything and simply cannot get SMS messages in or out. Virgin has no clue. Ironically, this is a replacement iPhone 5c; the lost 5c it replaced worked just fine.

Justrick,

Wow... really? I'm sorry to hear that. In my experience this has always solved the issue.

I would try typing the phone number into your Contacts App search bar (try to scroll to the top of the contacts list and the search bar will appear). Type the problematic phone number and make sure there are no phone contacts associated with that number. If it's still there make note of the name and delete it.

Then re-do steps 1,2,3, and 4. Somewhere in the phone or messages app that number is probably hanging on in there.

The last step that I have just recently found- open your Facetime app and make sure they are not in the recent calls or favorites section in the Facetime app. If they are, then delete it.

After all that, reboot again.

Gosh beyond that I don't know where the number could be stuck. If all else fails, with that particular contact you could use another messenger like Facebook or WhatsApp to talk to them.

Thank you for the feedback- Good luck!

I greatly appreciate the reply, jeffed, but I think there must be something else afoot here. I can't text to *any* contact (outside of iMessage), even a new one. I even wiped the iPhone and didn't restore the backup; same result while texting. Virgin says there's no block on the account, but it seems like it *must* be a server-side problem.

Anyway, thanks again for your suggestions.

Justrick,

I see what you mean. I agree with you, I think that is likely a different issue if it is happening with every contact.

Did you, Virgin, or your previous Carrier do a contact list import?

Sometimes a "basic" feature phone will have contacts stored without area codes. If they are then imported that way to the iPhone via a SIM Import or some carrier software, it would probably not be fixable without removing every contact and adding them back in manually. You should *still* be able to test that on a single contact, but it sounds liek you have already tried that.

I would call Virgin and see if they'll help you. Good luck!

From what I have found if its only one or two contacts in the phone that are giving a problem then deleating the contacts, messages and call logs from the numbers and power the phone off . once the phone powers on again test with out contact and if that works save numbers back in contacts . I have tested this many times as I am an iphone specialist with at&t .

Thank you!, this solved my problem. I have been to the Sprint store twice and online and none of them could figure out how to solve the problem. Maybe you should work for Sprint..lol

Great job Cookiebug79.

Check cookiebug79's answer. It worked for me after repeated trips to Sprint.