No message forwarding option under Messages settings

Soft reset (hold down the home and power button until the the device powers off and then restart) handled my issue. JPAK offered this solution above after GriffW's decidedly unhelpful response. Thanks JPAK. It worked for me. :-)

Many thanks Brian

'Text Message Forwarding' now appears my iPhone 6 (IOS 8.3 ), which has synched with my iMac ( 10.10.3), but my iPad will not play ball! Think that I will go for lunch.

Martin

If a soft reboot does not work for you to restore the "forward SMS messages" menu, (it did not work for me) then make sure all of your devices are on the same wi-fi network. Sign out of iMessages on all devices. Next, on your iPhone, go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings. Let the phone finish clearing and restart. Once you are back to your home screen, go back to Settings Wi-Fi and log back into your wireless network. For me, this also reset my iPad for some reason, you may need to repeat those steps on all of your devices. Next, sign back into iMessages from your phone (always back out of everything ending with your phone, then sign back into everything beginning with your phone seems to work best for me) and the menu option to forward SMS should be available again. From there, activate each device in turn, entering the code displayed on the device into your phone.

Hello all! Not sure if anyone is still struggling with this issue, I struggled with this for about an hour after changing my Apple password. I was running all update OS's and had tried turning off and restarting my phone, as well as my Mac.

Thankfully, this worked for me and I was able to fix it so I could send and receive iMessages on my Mac by, going into Settings Menu (iPhone) > FaceTime menu. Once I turned that off and then back on I was able to turn on "Text Message Forwarding" in the Messages Settings.

Hope this helps!

Tried all the steps you listed to the point. Nothing happened. It's still not showing me the text forwarding options in messages settings on my iPhone.

MacBook Pro (OSX Yosemite, 13 inch, Mid 2012)

iPhone 4S (iOS 8.3)

Hi

I had exactly the same problem and resolved it by following the instructions in suite 156's link:http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-fix-text-message-forwarding-issues-on-ios-8-1/

Good luck

This is what happened to me so thank you! I had not enabled Location Services when I first booted up the phone and iMessages thus never appears. +1 DrMeta!

Adding the email was exactly what I needed to get it to work! Thanks for this, suite156.

The option is under Messages > Send & Receive. Make sure you have an email address active there. Forwarding appeared as soon as I did that.

soft reset didn't work for me either. then i decided to go back to settings then messages then clicked on send and receive button. there i saw that i was not yet signed in to my apple ID. when i did that i was given options as to how i can be reached by iMessage. i checked the phone number i am using then when i returned to messages, the text forwarding option was there already and showed 1 device - the device was my macbook air.

i hope this helps. that feature is really helpful for me because i can reply to text messages while i am working too.

lady cat

On my iPhone 5s (IOS 8) My "Text Message Forwarding" option in Messages disappeared too. I had to close the settings app and re-open it - then the option was visible again.

Same for me - soft reset on the iPhone made it come back - all working now.

WWhat fixed it for me was under messages in settings there is a "send & recieve" tab. Go into that and sign in. After doing that the Text Forwarding option re appeared.

I had this problem too. Drove me crazy for an hour. The soft reset did it on the first try. Thank you.

D Clisby wrote:

Adding the email was exactly what I needed to get it to work! Thanks for this, suite156.

The option is under Messages > Send & Receive. Make sure you have an email address active there. Forwarding appeared as soon as I did that.

This helped and made the forwarding option appear on my 4s ios841; THANKS!!!

I feel lucky because my 4s' wifi functionality has been erratic at best. I was a little confused reading a few different posts and ended up turning on face time as well thinking it was somehow related, but Clisby got it.

My only motivation for doing this is to have a back up of my text messages that is actually accessible on my mbp. I'm wondering if this only works for iMessages and nothing else? That would be a bummer.

Apple is so WEIRD about blocking out certain features, like a way to archive your text messages, or to "select all" in different operations; unexplainable.

Here is the solution! ( Test message forwarding)

1-have both devices on

2-make sure that you sign into iCloud on the first device

3-sign into the iCloud on the second device

4-you should receive a confirmation code on the first device.

5-enter that confirmation code to the second device.

Go to settings/messenger and you will see text message forwarding now.

A second issue I had was show photos in contacts not being there.

The solution to this is simple- turn off zoomed text mode. Settings/Display and brightness/view

Set to standard to see this option( it won't work in zoomed mode.