My deleted contacts still show up when I want to send a text message

Then why are you wasting everyone's time?? Restoring your iPhone as new is NOT an option dude! Why would you even mention something as ridicilous as that. I don't know about you, but most of us have hundreds of contacts in our phones can't just keep restoring our phones as new everytime we delete someone!

rezalution wrote:

Restoring your iPhone as new is NOT an option dude! Why would you even mention something as ridicilous as that. I don't know about you, but most of us have hundreds of contacts in our phones can't just keep restoring our phones as new everytime we delete someone!

At present, you have two options: restore as new, or live with it. There is nothing else anyone here can offer you. Sorry.

In fact im wasting MY time trying to help people like you. I don't have any problem with my iPhones but im trying to help. If you don't like it its your problem. And yes, restore IS an option. Its worth it? No, but IS an option.

The reason to mention that was to explain the issue about old deleted messages that "nmac9" mentioned.

Anyway you can try this workaround. Assign the old number to a fake contact like "$%#", send a message to that number and then delete it. The number will not comes up when you type the first letter of the contact that changed number.

Sorry for my English\

Sorry if im wasting your time.

Che

Cheon, you are not wasting anyones time! Thank you for posting the best available solution!

I would even say to the complaining poster, that I do not know of ANYONE that stores their contacts on their iPhone! Whoever would do that? I know litteraly hundreds of iPhone users, and to my knowledge ALL of them have their contacts online, most often on gmail, and simply sync the phone with these contacts.

That means that restoring your phone as new is as simple as putting in the login-information for your gmail/exchange/whatever-account, and all your contacts will be restored.

Wow...I wasn't trying to be rude to Cheon-I'm just shocked that this bug can't be fixed through an update. I am not complaining, but rather trying to get this bug fixed and actually HELP everyone with deleted contacts auto-populating! But apparently, some people consider re-entering hundreds of contacts back into their iPhones to be the solution! Jesper, I didn't know you could back up and restore your iPhone from your gmail or other account- if so then why are we even having this discussion? I thought you could only back up and restore using iCloud. If there is a way to back up and restore from gmail please tell me how!

rezalution wrote:

I didn't know you could back up and restore your iPhone from your gmail or other account- if so then why are we even having this discussion? I thought you could only back up and restore using iCloud. If there is a way to back up and restore from gmail please tell me how!

You don't back up to GMail, you can only back up to iTunes or to iCloud.

What they're referring to is keeping your contacts in GMail (or any other type of account that allows contact syncing to iOS). That way, if you have to Restore your device all you need to do is re-add whatever account you're syncing contacts from.

i have restored it as a new phone. i still have the same problem. it won't go away

I think I finally figured this out. You need to actually have a text convo with the person you want to delete. Go to the top contact in the text convo, hit edit contact, and delete that contact. I have been able to permanently delete two contacts so far this way ... after being on the line with Apple for four hours and receiving no help! Let me know if this works for everyone else! Some contacts that I want to delete I no longer have texts from so I cannot be sure that this works.

Feedback i just sent to Apple:

Hello, please can you fix the bug that brings up old contact names in recent calls and texts after you have altered the details in contacts. My Dad recetly passed away and it really upsets me when my Mum calls and it says Mum & Dad in my recent calls list.

Also it would be a bonus to choose which contact takes preference when a number is in multiple contacts as I have a big list that just says I.C.E. instead of my close family.

Thanks.

thats why im switching to samsung

I still have this issue and dligenza's idea hasn't worked for me :'( I have a Gmail account and when I remove this I lose a handful of contacts which is quite annoying too...

The ONLY way to remove the "Other" contact in the Messages app that no longer exists in your contacts is to restore as a new phone. Adding a contact with that # and renaming doesn't fix it.

I've talked to Apple about this and it is a known bug - one that hopefully can be resolved in a future release.

This worked for me:

Open Contacts

Type name of deleted contact in Search (it found it even though I deleted it from contacts earlier)

Select the deleted contact

Edit

Delete Contact

It worked for me to create a “fake” contact assigning the old phone number that kept coming up to that fake contact. I then deleted the fake contact and that number is no longer associated as “other” when I iMessage the original contact.

meacnp that is exactly what I had to do. It suck and Apple really needs to find a way to fix this but this is the easiest way to get rid of these hidden contacs without wiping your phone.