force sending text message instead of imessage in ios8

No, flappyw, it's not somewhere else - Eric is just plain wrong. It is *not* always available, only sometimes, and those times seem utterly random. I can send a message to a family member who I know is out of wifi range, the message bubble is blue and says "delivered" because the imessage sent okay from my end, which is on wifi, but the recipient doesn't get it until they get back into wifi range. I'll hold the message bubble and about half the time I'll get the "send as sms" option, but half the time I won't. It makes no sense, and I'll be ****** if I'm going to pay massive data roaming fees or switch the wifi off every single time I need to message someone when they are out of wifi range!

After a lifetime of Apple products, I am this >< close to switching to Android.

Settings...messages.. turn on imessage.. turn on mms.. turn off imessage.

My mms showed to be on until I turned on imessage..after I turned it on there, everything works fine.

harlandmii

I got a new iphone 6 yesterday and was getting very frustrated with not being able to force an imessage to send as a normal text.

Did as you suggested and it works perfectly!!! THANK YOU!! 🙂

Thanks so much, this solved the problem for me.

even I had that on, it still sent as an iMessage

ofcourse: when possible it sends the no cost iMessage, when you absolutely want a SMS, you have to disable the (WiFi) internet connection first, then it is forced to send the message as SMS (at cost).

Actually you don't understand special situations. And apparently Apple doesn't either.

My family has verizon iPhones. One daughter is now studying in Canada. Sometimes I travel to Europe. When abroad data plans are uber expensive. So we use text. But our family and friends in US with iPhones can't get their phones to send us sms no matter how our iPhones are set up abroad.

Result iMessage does not allow US territory iPhones to send an SMS to an iPhone abroad. The person abroad can send SMS to US but not visa versa.

They eventually get their iMessages when laptop or phone is in wifi range. But it is not the same as instant text.

Apple should give the sender the choice on every message whether it is sent as SMS via cellular plan or as data via cloud.

You described our frustration exactly. Even though our problem is caused by family member with an iPhone living in Canada.

Thank you for describing my problem.

Thanks. This is the way to go rather than turning wi-fi off.

You've got to see the post by mcdscott . He's got it right so you don't have to turn off wi-fi. Once you have iMessage turned off, delete the threads of messages that were sent with iMessage.

Actually, the sending of international texts is as expensive if not more than using data. You have the option to turn off iMessage, but it is difficult to keep turning it on and off for specific situations given the need to activate. And, once someone sends you a message with iMessage and you turn it off again, their device still sees your device as using iMessage. Seems to me that you may want to permanently disable iMessage for your devices if you want to change all of the time. That is your only option at this point. But I would verify that international texting is cheaper than the small amount of data necessary to send an iMessage. As far as Apple not understanding, you would need to provide feedback to them to help them understand situations. Feedback goes to this link. http://www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate subject area. Explain the situation to them as to how you would like to see iMessage operate.

This worked perfectly! Thanks!🙂

You. Are. A. Lifesaver!!!!

I just spent an hour on the phone with tech support for our wireless company. They were unable to help me. They had me resetting my phone, deleting network settings, deleting contacts, re-adding contacts, shutting off iMessage, and more nonsens. (Ending with them finally saying "maybe you should call Apple".)

Your fix completely solved my problem on multiple phones within two minutes. Thank you thank you thank you!

I know this thread is old, but same bug in ios9 too. Any conversations that previously has imessage turned on at any point were forcing me to use imessage for all future messaging too. If you turn off the setting for imessage and tried to send a message to that person, it would not allow you and told you to turn on imessage. It was not possible to send a text or an imessage at all without imessage turned on and then only imessage would work once turned on. This is a problem because I refuse to use data for my texting! So I went into my messages app, found the conversations that previously has imessage used, and deleted those messages/histories. Closed out the app. Went back into settings>messages>turn off imessage then. Then I went back to my messaging app, starting a brand new conversation with the person and I was able to text message again! Hope this helps! Basically, keep imessage turned off and delete any messages that show history of using imessage in them, start with a fresh conversation and regular texting should resume.

Still same problem here on iPhone 5S using iOS 9.1

Any Apple people listening? This is useless and needs to change!

I tried everything apart from suggestion by XkoopaG7 on Oct 22, 2014 - read it too late.

Ended up deleting iMessage conversation and then defaults to SMS for that contact.

But shouldn't have to delete a conversation for that!

APPLE JUST SORT THIS!

Henk Smit wrote:

Still same problem here on iPhone 5S using iOS 9.1

Any Apple people listening? This is useless and needs to change!

I tried everything apart from suggestion by XkoopaG7 on Oct 22, 2014 - read it too late.

Ended up deleting iMessage conversation and then defaults to SMS for that contact.

But shouldn't have to delete a conversation for that!

APPLE JUST SORT THIS!

This is a user to user support forum. Apple does not participate here, so to answer your question, "Any Apple people listening?" The answer to that is no. As far as your statement, "APPLE JUST SORT THIS!" They won't see this statement, so they cannot. If you want Apple to hear your statement, that is done via the feedback link. Go to http://www.apple.com/feedback and click on the appropriate subject area.