Contact name is Red in iMessages on iPhone

Hi, I recently had this issue after having my iPhone on airplane mode for a while. When I resumed work at my MacBook Pro a few hours later... all my "green" contact names that were SMS conversations had turned to "red" ... I could receive texts from these names, but was not able to send texts. "Blue" iMessages still worked.

Here's how I fixed the problem:

1). Reset Network settings on the iPhone... Settings > Reset > Reset Network Settings (you won't lose any data, apart from saved passwords for WiFi networks, so be prepared to re-enter needed WiFi passwords).

2). Disable iMessage on the phone under Settings > Messages > toggle the "Enable iMessage" to the off position.

3). Enable iMessages... it may take a few moments to activate... allow it to activate... you should then see "Text Message Forwarding" options... go there and toggle any listed devices to the Off position, then back to the On position.

This fixed the problem for me on my new MacBook Pro 2016 running Sierra. Hope it works for anyone else having the problem.

It means you cannot send an iMessage to the contact. You can only send a regular SMS text message.

If that's true, it's a kind of bad interface design decision... 'red' means 'not working' or 'error'. It should be green, like on the iPhone, to show that it only sends sms. I thought that this was the case actually and that there is just a bug that occurred somehow...

At the time this thread was last active, if I've got my timeline right, you couldn't send an SMS from either a Mac or an iPad, only iMessages. Now, if you have Message fowarding enabled, you can. So, some of what was said in this thread no longer applies to people who have iPhones and have it set up to forward messages.

So after researching this, if you get a new iPhone or do a hard true reset and erase all content, you will need to enable the text forwarding in messages on the iPhone first, then on the iPad, iPod touch, or Mac. So open settings>message>text forwarding

azboarder23, your solution solved this problem for me, thanks.

Thank you. The response solved my problem.

So I figured out that red means no iMessage, obviously, but my question is when I add the contact the mobile number and email both have iMessage next to it. I select the mobile number and the name is blue, it then turns to red after about 5-10 seconds.

The person clearly has an iCloud account and can receive iMessages. Just not from my Mac. And I am using it to send other people iMessages all the time...

I have a one iMessage group text going that a contact is in and her name is blue. We started another one last night and when I try to add her to that one her name turns red. We are all running ios10. One of the other ladies tried to add her and the same thing happened. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I did exactly as you said with one exception, I cannot find where to toggle on and off forwarding. Hence, my problem still persists. Any help or ideas you can give me would be great. I have 7 and run iOS 11.0.3. Thank you so much in advance.

itsolga wrote:

I did exactly as you said with one exception, I cannot find where to toggle on and off forwarding. Hence, my problem still persists. Any help or ideas you can give me would be great. I have 7 and run iOS 11.0.3. Thank you so much in advance.

Are you looking, on your iPhone, in Settings>Messages for Text Message Forwarding?

That did it for me as well. Thank you!

no problem!

Glad it helped.