Cannot Signin to imessage

Troubleshooting activation of iMessage only refers to a few minute steps. If those fail, then you contact Apple support. Most of the problems experienced with activation are generally traced back to connection issues with the carrier and the Apple servers that handle iMessage. To activate iMessage, your iOS device will send a hidden SMS message to the Apple servers in the UK, verifying the device and login. If the device cannot send or receive the SMS, activation fails. Some carriers charge for these SMS, however, if they are a supported carrier, most do not. Blocking international SMS will also cause them to fail. See this support document. If you get an error when trying to activate iMessage or FaceTime - Apple Support

It's incredible that so many years later there is not one single reference in the internet that solves this for once. This has to be the single biggest issue for Apple customers that own more than one of their devices. For the amount of time I've had to spend whenever i get a new apple device trying to get this to work i would get days maybe even weeks. It's just arbitrary the types of errors this gets and how they persist almost indefinetely. There is no amount of login / log out / power off / power on that helps this issue. it definetly is a scenario in which the level of frustration is huge. The bite off the apple logo, if you will. 3 hours in this with no success.

After spending an hour on this...and going nowhere...found this post and did what was suggested in exactly that order.

didnt think it would work.....but it did.

drop the setting. Restart. iMessage THEN FaceTime THEN icloud

amazing that this has been an issue for so long without a real fix.

but thanks for the tip.

lifesaver

A solution was found to be helpful here, https://origin-discussions-us.apple.com/thread/7219734?start=15&tstart=0

I am encountering the same problem haven't tried the solution on the link myself.

Hi, it's just as easy to fix this issue. All you got to do is the following:

1- Be sure to be logged out of iMessage and FaceTime, then, log out of iCloud on your iPhone/iPad/iPod

2- Turn off the device, then, turn it on, and do the following, in order:

3- Go to Settings->Messages->Log in using your iCloud account (it may take a few minutes so just wait)

3- Go back to Settings->FaceTime->Log in using your iCloud account (same here, it may take a few minutes so wait)

6- Go back to Settings->iCloud->Log in using your iCloud account

4- There you go! Now you have enabled iMessage and FaceTime!

Hope this helped! 🙂

This didn't work for me, despite meticulous direction-following, but restoring the iPhone (and then waiting a little while for activations) did work.

I also have this problem. Two things appear to have cause it:

• my wife upgrading from an iPhone 4 to a 6S Plus
• my iPhone 4S upgrading to iOS 9.2.1

Now

1. Siri thinks I'm polygamous, married to myself as well as my wife.
2. My wife's phone thinks she's me. After our last correction of this, she now has my picture.
3. My phone thinks I'm my wife.

We have corrected this repeatedly, and spent hours on the phone with Apple Support.

I'm very frustrated. We may take the 6S Plus back. even though it's a brilliant piece of hardware. I'm an Apple/Microsoft agnostic: I just want something that works. And I will pay for it if I don't have to be my wife's tech support. While Steve Jobs was alive, Apple delivered that. Now I'm in the worst of both worlds: paying for an Apple experience and getting a (less than) Microsoft experience. I don't want the hassle of changing ecosystems again, but it looks like I'll have to.

this helped me - thanks

This worked very well- in this order. It seemed after I turned my ipad off a little and turned it back on, it did some sort of cleaning process and now it's working better tHan ever.

Thank you. This worked for me, too in Feb 2017.