How do I erase recent text message contacts which are already deleted contacts?

Te recents are stored in cache memory and the only way to delete is to restore phone as new

I have several friends that travel and use roaming numbers when doing so, in some cases I now have to scroll through 20+ deleted contacts to find the current one. This behaviour is not in any way acceptable and judging from the number of posts complaining about it and the age of some of the posts I doubt Apple will be fixing it. Ofcourse, I could just wipe and rebuild my contacts etc.. each time one of my friends leave the country, after all it would only mean rebuilding my iPhone every couple of months. I am beginning to regret switching from BlackBerry to iPhone last year...

All of you - Log a bug:

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

Did you try this?

Assign the old number to a fake contact like "$%#", send a message to that (old) number and then delete the contact.

Considering that the history of this issue seems to go back several years through several models I am under the assumption that this bug has been logged many times, I will check however. I just got off the phone with my service provider and am contemplating solving the issue with a BlackBerry 10.

cheonweb, I'll try that but the rates for foreign texts can get quite pricey when I would have to do it for nearly 60 numbers. Why should the expense be incurred by me when deletion should be a fairly straight-forward function, at least it is in every other phone I've ever owned.

Hi cheonweb,

No, doesn't work, just adds another deleted contact to the list.

Well, after trying a backup and restore that took 20 minutes and changed nothing, I decided to copy to paper all of my contacts, account information and password etc. I then wiped my iPhone and proceeded to rebuild my iPhone manually. After nearly 6 hoursI have to admit that it worked. However, this is not only a massive inconvenience, it is a privacy issue. Anyone who might have access to my iPhone can see any numbers or old contacts that I have messaged even though those messages are deleted along with their contacts. How many more issues are there like this that are hidden in the iPhone that I haven't run into. Already I have heard that my GPS data is cached so with the proper software I can be back-tracked and now I find that information I thought was deleted was not "really" deleted. Even the Windows 7 phone I updraded from was more secure than this. Ofcourse I could pay for software to possibly edit the iPhone directly but hey I don't believe that I should have to dole out cash to delete something that I've already deleted. Oh well, I have ordered a BlackBerry, thanks for the waste of money Apple.

found this on another website:

haleyjohnston Mar 16, 2014 at 1:49 AM

Ok so I just figured it out when you go to create message and then type in there name a little i thing will show up, click on that and then you should see an option to remove from recents hit that and then it'll be gone permantly. Hope this helps!

It is a pain, but in messages, type in the letter "a". Delete all the messages that have the info "i" to the right of them. You will have to do this for every letter in the alphabet.

This worked for me! I allowed a friend to use my phone, she logged into her iTunes account and since then whenever i go to text my "mom" and begin to type the letter "m" my iphone will display recently contacted contact that have the letter "m" in it. So i see both my mom's number and my friends contact information for her mother. luckily our mothers have different area codes and i've been able to tell the difference but it got annoying to see this. I would see this for different letters i would type. Example: John- i would see my contacts and recent contacts along with some of her contacts...I followed the above advice and went through the long ordeal of going letter by letter and erasing the contacts that displayed the "i" and then hitting "remove from recent"