Delete A Imessage And Start Again
Sometimes, if you have many iMessage on a conversation, It may get stuck and cause the failure of sending a new iMessage. Delete that specific message and try to start again. If you get the error again, try to remove the conversation and start a new one. This method may work when you get an error on sending iMessages on specific contacts only.
Note: Before you try to delete the specific message, please make sure that you have a copy or backup for saving.
Determine Whose Imessage Is The Problem
Before you can start troubleshooting your iPhones , youll first want to determine if its your iMessage that is broken or someone elses. A quick way to do this is to try to send an iMessage to several contacts that you know have an iPhone. If iMessage isnt working with just one of your contacts, then its likely an issue with their iMessage. Conversely, if it isnt working with all of your messages, its more likely a problem on your end.
Why Do I Get The Activation Unsuccessful Error On Imessage
The Activation Unsuccessful error may occur on your iPhone because your device isnt able to use iMessage to send and receive iMessage texts. If youre one of those users who are facing this issue, then here are some reasons why this could be happening:
- iMessage isnt yet activated on your iPhone or has mistakingly got deactivated.
- Theres some temporary software glitch that could have happened because of a recent iOS update.
- Your iPhone isnt connected to the internet.
- Your primary phone number isnt chosen to send and receive iMessage texts.
- Your carrier doesnt offer SMS messaging on your phone number.
- Your iPhones date and time are incorrect.
- Apples iMessage servers are down temporarily.
- Theres some issue with your Apple ID or iCloud account.
- Your iPhones network is facing connection issues.
- Apple may have suspended the iMessage service for your account/device.
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How To Add Email Address To Imessage On iPhone X/8/8 Plus
Once iMessage is activated on your iPhone, you can send and receive texts with various effects. If you want to add the email address to iMessage, make it with tips below.
1. Go to “Settings” app on your iPhone, scroll down and tap on Messages.
2. Tap “Send & Receive”, and then tap “Add Another Email”…..
3. Type in the email address you’d like in iCloud/Me/Mac, Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account.
Still Not Activated After A Day
It might take up to 24 hours to activate iMessage and FaceTime. If the issue continues after 24 hours, follow these steps:
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How To Turn Off Imessage Online
If you no longer have your iPhone, you can deregister iMessage at Apple.com.
This is good to do if you switched to a non-Apple phone and aren’t getting SMS/MMS messages.
You’ll need to enter your phone number. Apple will then send you a confirmation code that you’ll need to enter into the site.
“After you complete deregistration, your phone number is removed from iMessage services,” Apple says on its website.
“You should be able to receive text messages straight away but it might take a few hours for some Apple devices to recognise that you’re not using iMessage when they send you a message.”
How To Turn Off Imessage
Most of the time, iMessage isnt a problem, as text messages to non-Apple users will send as standard SMS messages. However, if youve purchased a non-Apple phone, it can cause issues if you leave iMessage enabled. Other Apple users may send you a message through iMessage that you wont be able to read or receive on your device.
The only option is to switch iMessage off, especially if youve decided to keep the same phone number. You can disable iMessage by following the steps below.
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Disable Imessage On iPad
You can also turn off iMessage on your iPad, where the steps are similar to those required by iPhone users. Youll need to switch iMessage and FaceTime off using the Settings app on your device.
To disable iMessage on your iPad:
Next, you must deactivate FaceTime on your iPad:
To stop Apples messaging system from working on your Mac:
Similarly, you must also turn off FaceTime:
iPhone Text Message Tricks Everyone Should Know
Learn how to master the Messages app on iOS.
Nelson Aguilar
Nelson Aguilar is an LA-based tech how-to writer and graduate of UCLA. With more than a decade of experience, he covers Apple and Google and writes on iPhone and Android features, privacy and security settings and more.
Jason Cipriani
Contributing Writer, ZDNet
Jason Cipriani is based out of beautiful Colorado and has been covering mobile technology news and reviewing the latest gadgets for the last six years. His work can also be found on sister site CNET in the How To section, as well as across several more online publications.
You’ll soon be able to unsend and edit text messages, a feature that’ll be released along with iOS 16 later this month, but you don’t have to wait until then to explore Messages settings that might enhance the texting experience on your iPhone right now.
Read more: The iPhone 14’s Future May Be Hidden in iOS 16
In this guide, we’ll show you several tips and tricks, like pinned conversations and sending money via text, that can help you unlock the full potential of iMessage. Here’s what you need to know.
You can also check out some of the other features expected to be released with iOS 16 this fall, including five hidden iOS 16 features we didn’t expect to find and some of the more annoying iOS 16 features and how you can fix them.
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Tailor Imessage Settings To Work For You
It’s a good idea to open the Messages’ settings screen and take a few minutes to go through the various options and customize how Messages will work. Most importantly, double-check your send and receive settings.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked why some messages are showing up on a Mac or iPad, but not an iPhone — or the other way around. Luckily, it’s an easy fix: Don’t use your email address, use only your phone number in the Send & Receive section of Message’s Settings.
Or if you don’t have an iPhone, but use iMessage on a Mac and iPad, then make sure your Send & Receive settings look identical. I have a thorough walkthrough of that process here.
The rest of the settings determine things like if read receipts are for on every iMessage conversation, whether or not you want text messages forwarded to your other Apple devices or kept on your iPhone, how long you want to keep messages on your device, and so on. Take a few minutes, go through each option, and decide how you want Messages to behave.
If you’re new to iMessage and are unsure how to turn it on, skip to the bottom of the post. We cover the process there.
Messages in iCloud keeps everything in sync and backed up.
How To Fix Imessage Needs To Be Enabled
iMessage is a very stable platform, but it occasionally has a slight hiccup or two. If youre having trouble figuring out why you cant send or receive any messages, try the following suggestions.
- Have you followed the procedures listed above to the letter? If not, go back and start again.
- Disable and re-enable iMessage.
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How To Activate Imessage On Your iPhone
Before you go ahead and try fixing issues with iMessage, you need to make sure that iMessage is enabled and activated on your iPhone. To activate iMessage on iOS, open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Inside Settings, select Messages.
On the next screen, turn on the iMessage toggle until it turns green.
This should turn on iMessage on your iPhone. If youre unable to turn on the iMessage toggle on your iPhone and you continue to see the Activation Unsuccessful error, then you can use the fixes below to get it resolved.
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Hide Alerts Pin Conversations And More
It’s easy enough to send and receive messages in the Messages app, and telling apart iMessages from text messages is easy as well — if the messages you send are green, it’s a text message. If the bubble is blue, you’re talking to a fellow iMessage user.
We have a roundup of 10 tips that take you beyond the basics of sending and receiving messages.
For example, you can mute individual conversations with a left swipe across the conversation and select the purple HideAlerts option particularly useful if you’re in a noisy group who can’t quit talking about last night’s football game.
You can also pin a conversation to the top of the Message page. All you need to do is press down on a conversation and then select Pin. The pinned conversation’s contact photo will now appear above all the other messages.
Also, make sure you take advantage of the search feature, as well. You can search the Messages app for photos, links, documents, locations, collaborations and text within a conversation. Just open the Messages app and tap on the search bar at the top.
You can use Apple Cash to pay people through the Messages app on your iPhone.
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Backup Imessages Through Icloud
Having a constant backup of your iMessage conversations that syncs across all of your Apple devices is another one of my favorite benefits of Apple’s messaging platform. Apple uses iCloud to back up and sync your Messages conversations .
The short version of instructions is this: Open Settings> tap on your name > iCloud and make sure the toggle next to Messages is turned on.
Keep in mind, if you delete a conversation from one device, it will be deleted from all of your devices. That also means if you opted to have conversations only stored for 90 days, then your iCloud backup of Messages will follow suit.
Messages is a robust app, with plenty of hidden features.
Turn It Off And On Again And Restart Messages
As in all good troubleshooting articles one essential piece of advice is to turn it off and on again. You could start off by double-pressing the Home button and swiping up on the Messages app, before relaunching it. If the app was hanging this may well fix the problem.
The fix
If things still arent working you could try the following:
For related advice you may also like to read How to send and receive text messages on Mac and How to use Messages on the iPhone.
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Using An iPhone Or iPad
Fix #: Restart Your iPhone
iOS like any software out there can run into glitches that may prevent some features from working on your iPhone. If iMessage had been working for you in the past and you recently started facing the Activation Unsuccessful error, then it could be because of temporary issues in your software which could be fixed with a simple reboot.
You can reboot your iPhone by following these instructions:
- On iPhones with Face ID : Press and hold the Side button and either of the Volume buttons until you see the Power-off slider screen. When the slider appears, drag it to the right to turn off your iPhone. After your iPhone is completely shut down, wait for 30 seconds and then press and hold the Side button until the Apple logo shows.
- On iPhones with Touch ID : Press and hold the Side button until you see the Power-off slider screen. When the slider appears, drag it to the right to turn off your iPhone. After your iPhone is completely shut down, wait for 30 seconds and then press and hold the Side button until the Apple logo shows.
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How To Know If Imessage Is Active On iPhone 13
Once you activate iMessage on your iPhone, you will see subtle changes in the Messages app, which is the app you use to send and receive iMessages. With that said, here’s how to know if iMessage is active on your device.
1. Launch the Messages app on your iPhone.
2. Tap on the ‘Compose‘ icon, found in the top-right corner of your screen.
3. Type in the name of a person you know who has iMessage active on their iPhone.
4. Wait a couple of moments, and that person’s name should turn blue.
5. Any messages you exchange should be placed into blue-colored bubbles.
6. If you see green-colored bubbles, that means you’re using SMS messages.
Looking to learn more about your iPhone? If that’s so, make sure to check our latest iPhone 13-related articles. We’ve prepared a huge selection of tutorials and guides for both beginners and advanced users alike.
That would be all on how to activate iMessage on your iPhone 13. You can use the comments section below in case of any questions. Thank you for reading!
Learn How Imessages Are Different From Sms Messages And Why You Should Turn On Imessage
Do you want to know how to enable iMessage on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac computer? Are you wondering what is iMessage, and what is the difference between it and an SMS ? In this guide, we’ll cover that, enabling iMessage, why you should use iMessage, customizing iMessage, and using iMessage on your Mac. If you follow these steps and get an iMessage waiting for activation error notification, we have a troubleshooting guide to get your iMessages activated and working. As a final note, if you came to this article because an iMessage was not delivered, or was sent as a text message instead, we have the answer to how to know if someone blocked your number.
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Chat Over Imessage With Businesses For Customer Service Issues
Friends, colleagues, and acquaintances aren’t the only people you can talk to over iMessage. You can also talk to businesses for help with things like an order you placed on Newegg, or get report a fraudulent transaction on your Apple Card to Goldman Sachs in the Messages app.
A company that uses Apple Business Chat is easy to spot, with most companies listing a “Chat with Messages” button on their respective support pages or in their apps. Just tap on it to open a conversation. Right now, there isn’t a way to search iMessage for a business name.
Enabling Imessage On Ios
On iOS, the process is the same regardless of whether you have an iPhone or iPad. For this article, we will show the iPhone interface. First, open iOS settings and scroll down to Messages. Tap the right-facing arrow on the right of the screen.
This will open up iMessages options. To enable the platform on your iOS device, scroll down to iMessage and toggle the switch to green. Now go through the rest of the page and decide on each option. One of the options will be whether or not you want to initiate iMessage conversations via your phone number or your iCloud email address.
Finally, go back to your main Settings page and tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen. Select iCloud, scroll down to Messages and toggle the switch to green. This will sync your iMessage activity to your iCloud account.
If you have another Apple device, youll immediately see your conversations appear there once you start using Messages. Even if you dont have another Apple device, then this step is still important, as it backs everything up in case of a device failure.
Now just open Messages, enter the phone number of the person you want to chat with, and youre off to the races. Messages sync with your Contacts book, so it will mainly be a case of just starting to type in the persons name and click on the right one.
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