"Recent" contact groups, showing up in Messages as suggested contacts.

I honestly don't know how to phrase this. My mother updated to iOS 11 before I did, and this morning she complained to me about how her contacts were all screwed up. I updated mine last night and didn't seem to have an issue.

She pulled up Messages and went to compose a new one, started typing in my father's first name and about 20 clusters of grouped together numbers came up. At first I had no idea what the deal was, but after a while I figured out they were stored numbers and contact groups of recent group messages she had gotten but deleted.

Is there really no way to turn that off? She can't even find her actual contacts in the mess of stored numbers and contact groups that iOS 11 has saved from messages she has already deleted. Disabling group messaging isn't an option that she can use, it's for work purposes. There needs to be a solution to keep Messages from storing those recent contact groups from messages.

iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 11

Posted on Sep 21, 2017 10:06 AM

Top-ranking reply

Waco Tx

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Nov 13, 2017 4:30 PM

After posting my reply, a friend thinks he has stumbled upon a "solution".

Since he shared with me what he did to remove this annoying clusters of groups and I followed what he did, I have none of the "groups" appearing (so far - and it has been two full days).

Here is what he discovered: When you type in the name of the person to whom you wish to send a text and the list of contact clusters appear, you will notice an "i" in a circle next to the "cluster" of contacts. Tap on the "i" and you will be taken to a screen called "RECENT" and to the right of "RECENT" you will see "REMOVE". Click on "REMOVE". You will then be asked if you want to "REMOVE FROM RECENTS". Click on "REMOVE FROM RECENTS".

So far this has worked for me. It was a pain to do because you have to do this for each and every cluster.

Now when I type in a friend's name, I get his/her name at the top as my first choice. YEAH!!! (for now)

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183 replies

Sep 8, 2018 2:18 PM in response to Whitedaisy15

OK, so I just chatted with a specialist and we think he solved the problem. Something got mixed up with my contacts so I shut off contacts in my icloud settings and deleted all the contacts. Then, I just turned the contacts back on. I was immediately able to address a text message to my daughter which wasn't working before I did that. Now, I'll see if this problem has truly been fixed over the next few days

Sep 9, 2018 7:21 AM in response to AHJessica46

Thanks to stevensteven123...hopefully you’ve all found this solution. We’ve confirmed that this helps fix the problem. Keep in mind that as you send more texts to different people/groups, those groups will remain in the que/suggestions for future texts (unless you do the following every so often to get rid of the suggestions)

stevensteven123

Sep 5, 2018 2:50 PM in response to Whitedaisy15

Level 1Re: "Recent" contact groups, showing up in Messages as suggested contacts.In response to Whitedaisy15

Dec 15, 2017 5:06 PM in response to Dimitra22

After turning off Siri... power off your phone and back on.

Kelley Mitchell

414-559-2055

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"Recent" contact groups, showing up in Messages as suggested contacts.