Messages won't send to contacts, it only works if I type in the phone number

Question

farahjay Author

Level 1

9 points

Messages won't send to contacts, it only works if I type in the phone number

Messages on my iMac no longer sends messages directly to my contacts.

I have to manually type in the phone number in the 'to' line and then hit send, this seems to work.

If I try and send directly to any contacts it doesn't work and says not delivered.

The error field says the number is not registered with iMessage even when I'm trying to send as a text message.

Send as a text message is ticked in my iPhone.

Any ideas?

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Mar 5, 2018 7:06 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Mar 5, 2018 1:18 PM in response to farahjay

Hi,

Most likely it is because the phone number do not contain the Country Code.

There have been issues in Sierra and High Sierra regarding this.

Messages used to be able to be set to your Location and this added the Local Country Code to any phone number that did not have one.

Then the OS used to pass this info to Messages and it was contained in the "madrid" .plist.

It seems this .plist no longer exists and the info is not passed to Messages meaning the Contact have to have the full phone number including Country Code.

So as am example:-

+1234567890 will work

The plain 234567890 will not.

9:18 pm Monday; March 5, 2018

 iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Sierra)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 iPhone 6 iOS 11.x and an iPad (2)

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 6, 2018 1:42 PM in response to farahjay

Hi,

Yes and no for the first one.

Yes it does seem the numbers now need the full number including Country Code, however there are Automator and AppleScript items out there that will do it in one go.

It does depend on which version of Messages (and the Mac OS) that you have.

The full name of the .plist is com.apple.ids.service.com.apple.madrid.plist

It seems that is some Updates and Upgrades this remains in place and seems to be readable by the app.

It does not seem to get updated daily from the OS as it used to, as the OS works out where your Mac is - but the info about the Country still exists in this file.

It is when the App loses contact with this file - normally at Updates or Upgrades that the issue presents itself.

It does seem that it one of those things that does not seem to effect everyone but appears when the OS is updated (OS 10.13.3 to 10.13.4 for instance) or Upgraded (OS 10.12.x to 10.13.x)

Not a perfect answer I know but it is best that we can determine from the posts on this subject.

9:42 pm Tuesday; March 6, 2018

 iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Sierra)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 iPhone 6 iOS 11.x and an iPad (2)

Reply

Answer 3

farahjay Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 6, 2018 7:34 AM in response to Ralph-Johns-UK

Hi Ralph,

So are you saying that I need to now prefix all my contacts one at a time for them to work correctly?

My wife has exactly the same set up as me in the office but yet her messages works and sync whereas my don't.

She messages all her contacts directly through contacts without the need to prefix any phone numbers with country codes.

Reply

Messages won't send to contacts, it only works if I type in the phone number

Similar questions