Why is iMessage combining two contacts into one thread. I can only text back the last one that messaged me. This started with iOS 12

I need help on my emails going to my previous phone that has a new owner

You have a completely different problem, I suggest that you start a new thread since it has nothing to do with this one.

captainjacksparrow wrote:

I deactivated iMessages, FaceTime and iCloud... just didn’t erase it... I can try that but I’ll be restoring it from a backup. Because there’s super important info on each phone and tons of it, which can’t be transferred if the phone is erased.

If you restore it from a backup, you're defeating the purpose of erasing it. It will try to reactivate things the way they are now.

What is the information stored in? Transfer it someplace else, then erase the phone. Don't restore from the backup or you're likely to end up right back where you started.

If you took the time to look back at this discussion you would see that the problem is happening to groups of people who do not share apple ids as well as those who do. It appears that their primary commonality is making use of the iCloud for more than Finding my iPhone. I have four phones on the same ID, use my laptop for backups, do not use iCloud, and once I signed out all four phones from Apple ID messaging have had no further problems with merging. A bit more effort on your part to understand the issue might help to avoid offering inaccurate sarcasm.

I have the same problem with my mother and sister. Their contacts merge, and I can only message the last one to message me. If I type the name of the other person into iMessage, it showd the messages of the last to message me (either my mother or sister). Very upset, please resolve Apple!

The only way I was able to get this to stop was assign one email/phone number to iMessages. I did this both on my end on the people I was contacting. My SIL was receiving the messages I was sending to my brother. I was perplexed. took me a few hours to sort out what was happening. I wiped this down to using only one email/phone number in my settings.
Which, as someone pointed out, this is assigned to one apple id... I think this is the problem i was experiencing, not sure.
I sent them messages using iPad, iPhone and MBP, then asked them what email/phone number the received it as.

Anyway, now I am afraid to selected all my emails I can be reached at because it may return to this craziness... I will follow threads to see what happens.

Most people are using it as it was designed to be. That's why each device has a "send and receive" section on it so they can pick what each phone receives. Even if one person only uses one id this is a issue. Say you have a separate work and personal phone signed into your apple id, now it's screwing up those messages and not separating them.

I had the same issue, which I have now resolved:

Go to Settings/ Messages/Send and Recieve

Touch on your Apple ID and sign out from your Apple ID for iMessages.

This will enable all devices to use their phone numbers only for messaging and not merge messages with the same ID.

Then delete the threads where the messages have merged and start again. It works for me.

Incorrect. It worked PERFECTLY FINE FOR YEARS, and it worked as advertised until iOS 12. This is a bug, and in no way, through any logic, should the phone be COMBINING texts from unique telephone numbers. Family Share is an option, not the correct solution to what is otherwise an operating error with this iOS release.

This is a huge problem. Apple demands that everyone have their own id, but taking my teenaged daughter off my apple id and putting her on her own apple id did not fix the problem. Her boyfriend's texts still go to both of us and he cannot tell which of us have texted him. This is very inconvenient.

I believe it’s to nudge people into creating a separate Apple ID per device. Wether it’s intended to be a nudge or not people should have gotten a warning that after updating to ios12 it’s a good possibility that if u share the same Apple ID with someone your convos could get mixed up

darrinofmaplewood wrote:

Are you serious? Not trade messages with them over an Apple mis-step? Wow! We get it Philly_Phan, people are not supposed to share Apple ID's. Here's the problem though -- They do!

Yes and they're causing problems for you. If you're unable/unwilling to convince them to use the iPhones properly, then you have to put up with the consequences.

Hi

After making this change for any device, have you done the following to any one device:

- check the Messages history to see separate conversations across your family

- power down your device

- power up your device

- Recheck your messages history and see if those histories got combined within your family

Let those of us following here know what you see

Creating separate Apple ID's and Family sharing is not a solution as it still leaves iMessage broken. Unless Apple makes all users do this unilaterally and immediately.

For my issue, I am not the one sharing an Apple ID and I cannot make other people get their own Apple ID's. Until Apple creates a solution which either fixes the problem or forces other users to not share their ID's, I cannot be certain who is messaging me or who I am messaging. This leaves iMessage completely unreliable - if the receiving party fails to properly set up their Apple ID you cannot be certain of the recipient. This would even be true of new users setting up new accounts. If they share an ID you may inadvertently message the wrong person and you would have no way of knowing.

I downloaded iOS 12 when it was first available in September. For a week, I had the same frustrating problem with myself and my teenage daughter. Our iMessage threads were merged into one under my Apple ID with my Apple ID icon. So everything I had texted to myself was showing up in that conversation. It was extremely annoying and I thought about setting up family sharing with an Apple ID for my daughter, but she did not want to do that because she did not want to lose her data with her apps. So, after many different ways to try to solve this including generating a new text message & typing her contact name in, which would show her in the contact and then as soon as I sent the message it would merge it again, I found a solution. I started a new text message & typed in her phone number with the area code, and ever since then, I was able to retrieve her thread by itself with all of our pre-existing iMessages intact. Now I can go to iMessages and click on her thread as usual, and it will only sent it to her phone.

I just called Apple support and was VERY surprised to hear that this issue is not a bug and won't be fixed.
I share an Apple ID with my family and have for years. We have 6 iphones, 5 apple TV's a MAC, 4 laptops. We are apple good customers.

However when I updated to IOS12 whenever I text my son its now added to my wifes text string so my son to read, much of which is about him that he now read. Its now doing the same to my other son and adding him to my wifes text but the strings to both my sons are GONE. This is not occurring for my other 2 sons and I can text them directly. Bottom line is that Apple Texting is no longer reliable at this point and they will lose many customers. I did find an article that was published by Forbes about this issue. The advisor said the ONLY way to fix this is to have all of us get our own ID's but this forum has been clear that this doesn't work. Ugh, just got a text from someone who was texting my wife and she said she did not get the text. Its a mess but I guess I will find out soon if she is having an affair.