imessage conversations out of order?

I too am having this issue every single day now, Messages wont show messages in the correct order the latest replies seem to be at the top and there are sporadiclly dotted parts of the convo through out the chat.

Also Messages is not notifying me of an incomong Messages and refuses to on first attempt quite often to even send and errors out.

Sort it out Apple if the iMessages can sync from my MBP to my iPhone 5 in perfect order every time they should the other way around getting very annoyed with it and am considering removing Messages all together.

The other bug is with chats randomly losing their names and them appearing as an unknown contact with a name such as -1234567

so this is not just me! i received a brand new mbpro (2012, non-retina) during the holidays. everything was fine with messages until just last week when it started mixing up the order of my conversation thread. everything appears as it should on both my ipjhone 3gs & my ipad 2. this is frustrating!

HI,

It is difficult to say if it is the expected behaviour or not.

If the Mac has been off line and a conversation is started on a iOS device and then Mac is turned On and Messages is launched then the Messages apps tries to Sync the conversation that has been started.

With long conversations people report it plays out like a speeded up chat rather then being "instant".

Also any new iMessages from the same person get mixed up in the "downloading" iMessages.

Even though the iMessages are Date Stamped Messages seems to ignore them at this point.

As Messages on the Mac is essentially iChat+ I suggest using this page for Feedback to Apple

7:32 PM Tuesday; January 22, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

nomenclature - thanks for flagging this issue

Ralph Johns (UK) - thanks for the iChat feature/bug form and help

I too am having this problem. Spent some time looking into it and found:

Problem doesn't appear on my iPhone 4

Problem does appear on my MacBook Air (10.8.2) running Apple's Messages 7.0.1 (3314)

Question:

Does anyone know if Apple Message application on Mac can actually use the sort manually function?

Apple Messages > View > Sort > By Time, Sort Manually.

Currently I can toggle between the 2, but neither resort and manual doesn't seem to let me rearrange.

Hi,

If I chose "Manually" (View Menu > Sort Conversations) I can then drag either (I have two) the bottom one to the top or the top to the Bottom.

I then switch one chat to iMessages and sent a Message to my Phone giving the two conversations different times

Switching back to "by Time" moves the conversations into the correct time/date order.

However the Chat/conversation you are viewing does not change.

You cannot drag the order of the conversations if "By Time" is selected.

9:03 PM Monday; January 28, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

The Problem with that is that I have an ongoing message thread I would like to save dating back many months. What I am finding is that when my MacBook re-connects to a wifi or what have you and if I have been sending iMessages using my iPhone in a period of time when the MacBook didn't have a connection - the iMessages I have sent in that time do get placed in Messages on my Mac but sometimes it puts iMessages I sent a mere 20 minutes prior and inserts them into the thread in a place that happened many days ago. I find that if I scroll up to the top where Messages on the Mac can download more old messages, it then places them in the right order. I shouldn't have to do this though 😟

Thanks Ralph Johns. I get it. I was expecting it to sort messages, but it is a sort converstaions by buddies (ie the left side of the message pane where you see the list of your buddies either manually sorted, or by time/date stamp). Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Chris - I just got my messages to resort correctly. I think it was your tip, but I had also gone and manually logged into icloud as well as play with many Apple message options, but next time I see it out of order I'll try your step to verify this can at least manually address the issue for now. Thanks for posting.

Hi |Chris|,

I would use this page as Messages is built on the iChat engine.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ichat.html

9:29 PM Monday; January 28, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi sinoue,

You are welcome.

9:30 PM Monday; January 28, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Just to be clear, according to today's press release "450 billion iMessages sent...". It's very hard to believe Apple isn't aware of this problem. I find it hard to imagine that the execs in Cupertino who use this software on their Mac's and iPhones aren't noticing the same issues we are. The question is, why are they taking so long to fix this and other bugs in iMessage given the volume of messages. It's such an obvious problem.

HI,

You forget how often Apple Staff leave their iPhones in Bars 😉.

My experience with iChat is that some items only seem to get dealt with by giving them enough feedback to tip the scales in to action taken.

8:28 PM Tuesday; January 29, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

I just wanted to chime in here and say I'm having the same issue. When I have Messages closed, and I get a notification for a new message, and open Messages, the new message is usually somewhere in the chat history of the past day. When I close and reopen Messages the message in question is now in the correct spot.

Seems to be like Messages is ignoring the timestamp when synced, however restarting the client fixes the sort issue.

I agree that this bug has existed for far too long, I have pretty much noticed it since day 1.

Ralph wrote:

"...

Also any new iMessages from the same person get mixed up in the "downloading" iMessages.

Even though the iMessages are Date Stamped Messages seems to ignore them at this point.

..."

That 2nd sentance is precisely what they need to correct. And it sounds abundantly simple to me, don't ignore the datetime stamp when sequencing/ordering conversations.

It should not matter how much feedback they get on this issue. As someone else posted, the execs in Cupertino can see planely enough that it doesn't work on their own Macs. I guess they don't use "Messages" on their Macs... or maybe they don't use Macs. 😮

FYI, I discovered just now that if I completely close Messages on my Mac after seeing that they did not sequence properly... and if I reopen it a few minutes later, then they are sequenced properly.

It's a workaround

difficult to follow your solution - scroll up to the top?

The individual messages within a conversation do not sort properly and i don't see anyway to fix it.