Everyone in my iMessage is offline (red)

HI,

iMessages is an Account within the Messages app that requires your to have Registered an Apple ID for it to work.

However if you are using your iMessage account you can of course leave conversations "Open" in the main Messages window.

If I do this then people I was speaking to "yesterday" tend to show Off line (Or at least the AIM and Jabber one do)

However if Contacts are selected in the "To" filed and their ID is not recognised as being Valid the colour around the Name in the "To" spot will turn Red.

This can be because the iPhone or iPad has run out of power or is not connected by Wifi or Cell/Mobile phone service.

I tend not to keep conversations or Chats that have finished open in the Messages window so I can't say I have seen this.

It does seem strange that if this is iMessage chats they have all gone red.

10:04 PM Tuesday; January 8, 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

Go to mail, contacts, and calenders in the system preferences. Then double click on your personal e-mail server in the left column and it will take you to a page were you will see your email account with iMessage. Click on that and enable iMessage. Should work.

HI,

Some Notes.

In System Preferences > Mail, Contacts and Calendars the iCloud account is listed as the top one on mine.

If I click this it does not list Messages.

i.e. the email you use for iCloud does not have to be the iMessages Account ID.

In fact my Apple ID email (An account with a dial-up service) is external to Apple and is only listed for Mail in that System Preferences pane.

What you describe will not work for everyone.

7:51 pm Wednesday; November 27, 2013

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mavericks 10.9)
 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

I'm not sure if you still need the help but I was just having the same problem. The advice that was given to you did not help me so in case you still haven't figured it out, I simply went into my messages, clicked on "messages" at the top left corner of my screen (next to the apple), then selected "accounts" .. right there, you will notice that your imessage is most likely not checked off. Check off imessage and your settings will go back to normal. your contacts should not appear red anymore 🙂 I hope this helps for anyone who is having the same problem!

Diana's solution worked for me, almost at least . I think my daughter changed the user so when I changed the account to iMessage it made everything blue again and took away 'offline' from beneath each contact, but now it's asking for my iMessage passord. It says to enter password for my email address which I have and it doesn't work. Nor does my system admin password or my apple id password. Any suggestions? Did I set up an imessage password at some point? This only happened a couple days ago, maybe after I charged my iPad with my computer. Might that have changed something? Thanks for any help!

Hi,

The iMessages account use an Apple ID and it's password.

There is no separate password set up process.

8:06 pm Wednesday; May 7, 2014

I am extremely confused by iMessage as well. I have several iPhones and they all have an Apple ID. When I want to start or answer a text from my computer instead, my one family member's iPhone number will be red and say its not registered, even when I am currently texting with them on the iPhone and it has an Apple ID connected to it. Is this something else I have to set on their iPhone in Settings>Messages?

Thanks!

Hi,

You need to separate out whether you are chatting iPhone to iPhone using Apple IDs or iPhone Numbers as a first step.

It may then pay to check the iPhone > Setting > Messages to see if the iPhone Number is actually ticked (it will be greyed out) in the Send and Receive part.

Next you need to consider whether the text being send back and forth is SMS or iMessages.

The iOS version will send SMS (if it is set to do so) when iMessages cannot be sent.

This may be down to having no WiFi connection or suitable carrier service.

All of these will tend to get a red response when trying to connect to an iPhone number from the Mac as Messages there does not do SMS.

9:07 pm Sunday; May 11, 2014

I don't know if you're still having this issue but I used Diana Giselle's solution and discovered that in iMessage>Preferences>Accounts I wasn't signed in with my Apple ID. I have this issue every now and then where I get signed out of Apple. I don't know if it's a Yosemite problem or if there's an update that didn't get installed but I guess this is the only solution I have

I tried Diana's above solution too. Once I logged into my apple id via preferences- account, I right clicked on the icon in my dock, and had to tell it to go online there too. Then, I had to quit iMessage and open it before everything corrected itself.

where is dana's instructions to correct this issue

Hi,

Diana's posts was on the 13th Dec 2013.

It is two up from this one Everyone in my iMessage is offline (red)

I can't link you it directly as no-one replied to it when it was posted. (in other posts you can use the "In reply to.." link to see the actual post when they are out of order)

Some of the ordering is based on your personal settings.

I view the threads in Threaded view. This "tabs" replies to the right and leaves other posts linked to items before more to the left.

On the whole the whole thread is then in date order but is can be difficult to follow if someone replies to a much earlier item as it drops to the bottom of the replies linked to that particular post.

Diane's Posts and the one beneath it are both link to the Original Post.

8:22 pm Saturday; January 24, 2015

This worked. Thank youuuu!!

this really helped thanks!!🙂

I opened Preference in [Cmd-,] Messages on my iMac, went to Accounts, and found I wasn't signed in. Signed in and everything's copacetic.