Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

imessage conversations out of order?

for some reason when imessage conversations sync between my 4S and my macbook, on the macbook everything is out of order. replies to me from days ago show as the newest, my more recent replies are somewhere in the middle of the conversation, and even then newest messages are above previous messages. then if I reply on the macbook, everything looks good until I close out of messages and go back in, replies on the macbook are then shoved randomly into an earlier part of the convo.


what's the deal? is there a way to sort it properly that I'm missing>

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), ios6, 4S

Posted on Oct 8, 2012 1:03 AM

Reply
160 replies

Feb 2, 2013 1:34 PM in response to stevebrown1950

Hi,


|Chris| is talking about a long conversation that you have in one chat where you can scroll the chat to the very "top" or start of the Chat.


It seems that when the current section containing those Out of Sequence iMessages are then out of view they get re-ordered when you scroll the Chat back.


Since that post other people are reporting that turning Off Messages and restarting it also seems to re-order the iMessages. (There are no issues with AIM or Jabber IMs)


User uploaded file
9:34 PM Saturday; February 2, 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

Feb 2, 2013 1:41 PM in response to stevebrown1950

HI,


He is stating about closing the whole App down (Quit) and then restarting the app as I just posted to your oldest reply to this Thread.


As Messages is not a year old yet it have not been "happening for years". It is a rolling year from when it was released not an arbitrary counting of "two years" as we passed the end on one of them.


User uploaded file
9:36 PM Saturday; February 2, 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

Feb 17, 2013 12:55 PM in response to Protector

HI,


The Mac Version can sort incoming messages or chats by Time or Manually (See View Menu > Sort Conversations).

The iOS version does not have this. The Newest chat which is also an iMessage in most cases is always at the top.


In the Mac version this appears to be only a sort for the conversations themselves (the order in which they appear in the left hand pane of the Main Messages window).

It does NOT appear to be a way to sort the iMessages or IMs within an iMessages Chat or a Buddy List chat.


The Mac version being Off and then turned On to sync conversations that had been held on an iPhone or iPad (or were in fact continuing) did seem to be the ones with the issue as the sync process and ongoing conversations seem to have different rules or priorities from the iMessages server causing new message to be out of place.


People do report that once the sync process has "caught up" Messages on the Mac can be restarted and the individual iMessages appear in the "right" order.

(I have not evidence of this due to my lack on Off line conversations as far as my Mac versions goes).


User uploaded file
8:55 PM Sunday; February 17, 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

Feb 17, 2013 1:31 PM in response to Protector

HI,


I have never tried it that way round either.



User uploaded file
9:31 PM Sunday; February 17, 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

Mar 17, 2013 12:09 PM in response to Eric D.

Just a quick update, I installed 10.8.3 and in the release notes, it said this bug had been fixed. It hasn't. Today, I had an iMessage conversation with someone on my iPhone. Later, I turned on my MacBook Pro and the conversation went 10:36am, 10:04am, 10:45am. I am really puzzled by this one. If the time stamps were wrong, I guess I could understand the problem but they aren't. Why is it so hard just to sort the messages by time stamp?


I will say the things seem less out of order since the update but they still aren't correct.


Come on Apple...let's get this one fixed!

Mar 20, 2013 4:25 PM in response to nomenclature

I'm having similar issues though they don't seem to be as severe. Just now the latest two imessages in a chat were out of order on my iMac and iPhone. I exited out as suggested and restarted on the iMac and it fixed the problem. Closed the app and went back in on my iphone and this solved it as well. However, I usually have the problem where imessages are just missing on the iMac, whilst the iPhone is fine. I'll do my bit and post on the feedback link too.

Mar 21, 2013 12:20 PM in response to Stage Age

Hi,


That iChat feed back page has been out of date alost as long as we have had iChat 3.

Sometimes it gets missed at OS update and it has been long time since the version numbers were any where near.


Type your info in the free text space.


Some people use iChat in pre Messages as a Jabber only client with GoogleTalk so that has not played a part since iChat 3 either.


I tend to put "n/a" as in Not Applicable in those boxes that make little sense (such as the ISP and router/modem models)




User uploaded file
7:20 PM Thursday; March 21, 2013


 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.3)
 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

imessage conversations out of order?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.