How do I change a contact from iMessage to regular text messages?

Sounds like an ordeal.

So in summary, what are the actual steps that have to be done?

Easy:

Turn off iMessage BEFORE you switch devices.

Too late for that. What can be done now?

What seemed to work for me when my son deserted his iPhone for a Samsung is:

Settings>Messages and turn on "Send as SMS". Apparently this will figure out that the receiver no longer has an iPhone (or equivalent) device and resend the message as a regular SMS text.

Just turn iMessage off completely. I don't use iMessage anymore because of this.

I might be missing something here, because I dont have any issue swapping between iMessage and normal Text message

I send a text by imessage then select the message and select "send as text" message from the pop up menu.

🙂

I Just wanted to say I went though this same problem when my mother switched from iPhone to droid. what I did was go into my settings (on my iPhone 5s) clicked on the messages tab, the third item down shows a little button labeled "SMS". By clicking that button it gives your phone the authorization to send any messages not received by the destination to send its as an SMS message. Meaning your iphone specifically will send messages to all users stuck in an iMessage setting.

I don't know if anyone cares anymore, i would hope that by now you figured out the issue....but if you or anyone new is reading this and still needs the answer, here it is.

If they got rid of or lost their iPhone and got a non iPhone with their number and the issue of your phone still trying to talk to them via iMessage is occurring, it is because they have their phone number still attached to either the messages app on their iPad or their Mac computer. If the phone isn't the issue then its most likely going to be one of those. Again you may have already figured this out but just incase, now its up here.

Cheers

You will have to turn off the internet ( cell data, wifi )

Very easy to solve from your non apple phone if you no longer have it.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

Settings - Messages - turn off IMessages

lol!!

so well written 4tru!!

LMAO!

MADD 👍

Thank You!

OverBles