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imessage working for some contacts and not for others

I've just set up an iPhone 6 as a new phone for my daughter (handed down from a big sister). It is for messaging between her and parents/sister when she is at home, so no SIM card and being used over WiFi only - this was the same as the previous setup for the older sister before she graduated to a SIM card. The phone has been completely wiped and set up as a new phone.

We are having trouble getting iMessage to work properly - I can get it to work between her and myself, but it won't send messages between her and her mother or her and her sister. Interestingly, this did appear to be working last night after initial setup!!! Now, every message says 'not delivered' and when trying to send a message to her mum's or sister's account, it comes up with a green message rather than a blue one.

I have tried:

  • logging in and out of iMessage and iCloud, with variations of rebooting phone in between or not
  • the phone is updated to latest iOS (12.4.4 on that iPhone is the latest I can get)
  • deleting threads and also deleting contacts and re-adding them


We are tearing our hair out trying to figure what could possibly be causing this and it appears nothing that we are trying makes any difference.

Grateful for any ideas that can be offered.

cheers


iPhone 6

Posted on Dec 29, 2019 5:46 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 29, 2019 6:00 PM

Messages Troubleshooting


Do you have access to another WiFi network where you can try? That has worked for several people.


Try a restart.


Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Try a forced restart.


Reset Device


If necessary


Hard reset



Do a backup and try a factory reset. Then restore from your backup.


Restore to Factory setting


Backup - Restore your device from an iCloud or iTunes backup

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 29, 2019 6:00 PM in response to lachlan66a

Messages Troubleshooting


Do you have access to another WiFi network where you can try? That has worked for several people.


Try a restart.


Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch


Try a forced restart.


Reset Device


If necessary


Hard reset



Do a backup and try a factory reset. Then restore from your backup.


Restore to Factory setting


Backup - Restore your device from an iCloud or iTunes backup

Dec 29, 2019 10:46 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for your prompt reply.

I had tried forced restart including a hard reset, which didn't seem to make a difference.

However, in the end I did the backup and restore as suggested, then sent a message from the other phones to the iPhone 6 in question, which went through as iMessages and then I could send iMessages from the iPhone 6 to the other phones.

So thanks, all sorted out now

Cheers

imessage working for some contacts and not for others

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