iMessage on Mac not showing contact names

[-Ryan-]

So I have buggered up my iMessage trying to fix this... (it now won't sign in and I have no idea why).

However, in trying to fix that issue, I do see that in Facetime preferences on OSX there is a 'location' setting. Mine was set to USA...

I can't test this right now, but thought it would be worth someone having a go!...

It doesn't fix the issue unfortunately.

 

[FearGhost]

Same here. I did a clean install of High Sierra today on my MacBook and the problem started then.

I have tried all of the suggestions and nothing is fixing it. It has to be a regional setting somewhere that's causing iMessage to not recognise +44 as being local to the UK.

I have looked everywhere and the only place I could find it was set to USA was FaceTime (as above) and also when logging on to iCloud in a web browser. Both changed but the problem is still there.

My Mac mini was upgraded to High Sierra and that seems to be ok?

 

[RvXtm]

MacBook Pro 2011 ,same issue, i am Romania +40, to all the contacts i do not have with +40, it shows as phone number on the mac.

Clean install of High Sierra.
Also the siri high quality voice is not downloading for me (english female)

iOS 11 and High Sierra, what a dump

 

[dai.hop]

I have submitted an official bug report to Apple regarding this problem.

https://bugreport.apple.com/web/?problemID=34734893

 

[ALI12]

Hello

I have 2 Macs all running the latest MacOS and an iPhone running the latest iOS. All three devices are using the same master iCloud contacts list and there are no other contacts accounts activated.

One one Mac I have an issue whereby some of iMessages are showing as phone numbers rather than resolving to the contact name.

logging out and in again to iCloud and rebooting has not resolved the issue. Anyone else seen this?

*I was able to fix this by adding my iCloud account into contacts. Contacts- Preferences- Accounts- then add your iCloud account with iTunes login.

 

[Hicksmat1976]

*I was able to fix this by adding my iCloud account into contacts. Contacts- Preferences- Accounts- then add your iCloud account with iTunes login.

yeah - its not that.
[doublepost=1506935753][/doublepost]

Also came here after disappointment that High Sierra didn't fix this...

To clarify the issue:

• iMessage signed-in properly
• Contacts syncing properly

Two issues:

• iMessage will not send from OSX without country code. If I enter 079XXX, it will always sync the contact picture but never the contact name, and will fail to send with a red exclaimation mark
• iMessage will send from OSX with county code - e.g. +4479XXX, it will always sync the contact picture but not the contact name UNLESS the number is entered with the country code in the contact card

All works fine on iPhone, iPad and - curiously - another machine running OSX...

This. Is. Bloody. Annoying.
[doublepost=1506526843][/doublepost]Just further context some people might find useful:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7891896?start=0&tstart=0

Sadly none of the tips worked for me... my AppleID is set as UK.

I do recall once setting it to US to try and download something so I wonder if that has screwed it up, but trying to force a change from UK to UK didn't work.

thanks for doing this - I should have done this at the beginning as thread starter. This summarises the exact issue I think most of us on this thread are having.

 

[Phil in ocala]

Hello

I have 2 Macs all running the latest MacOS and an iPhone running the latest iOS. All three devices are using the same master iCloud contacts list and there are no other contacts accounts activated.

One one Mac I have an issue whereby some of iMessages are showing as phone numbers rather than resolving to the contact name.

logging out and in again to iCloud and rebooting has not resolved the issue. Anyone else seen this?

______________________________________
In new OS High Serra...this application is now DEAD....

 

[Steve121178]

Just upgraded to High Sierra and have this +44 problem on all my Macs. Weird.

 

[Hicksmat1976]

well its nice to know as thread starter that its not just affecting me. a positive negative.

 

[jibblejobble]

well its nice to know as thread starter that its not just affecting me. a positive negative.

I've been struggling this problem for a good few months now and periodically try and tackle it doing the usual thing of turning iCloud off and on again, turning Contact syncing off and on again, looking for the old location preference. Nothing was working.

I just tried again using some of the new info on here and have managed to fix it. The trouble is, I did so many things I'm not sure which one did the job! I'm using the latest general release versions of macOS and iOS (10.13 and 11.0.1).

Here's what I did:

1. I signed out of everything on my Mac. iCloud in Sys Prefs. FaceTime (I noticed this was signed in using an old email address and the location was set to USA. It could be a clue – have you recently changed your email address and still logged in). Messages. iTunes (also deactivating all my old machines).
2. I signed out of iCloud on my phone.
3. I logged into icloud.com and signed out of all browsers.
4. I logged into appleid.apple.com and removed all my devices.
5. I also changed my email address. I was using a Gmail address with +appleid@gmail.com in it to differentiate it from other services. To make sure the + wasn't causing issues I removed the +appleid (so it was just my regular gmail.com address).
6. I restarted my Mac and phone.
7. When my Mac started up I signed into iCloud in Sys Prefs.
8. I opened FaceTime and noticed I was already signed in (location was again set to USA so I changed it to UK)
9. I opened Messages and the first thing I noticed was the names were all displayed corrctly.
10. I signed into iCloud and the names were still there (phew!)
11. I noticed my mobile number wasn't yet assigned to my account so I logged into iCloud on my phone
12. I was then prompted to use my mobile number on the Mac, which I accepted and the names are still displayed correctly.

I'll let you know if it slips back to the old behaviour at all, but I suspect the problem is that there are conflicting locations coming from various devices.

Looking forward to seeing if this works for anyone else

 

[-Ryan-]

I've been struggling this problem for a good few months now and periodically try and tackle it doing the usual thing of turning iCloud off and on again, turning Contact syncing off and on again, looking for the old location preference. Nothing was working.

I just tried again using some of the new info on here and have managed to fix it. The trouble is, I did so many things I'm not sure which one did the job! I'm using the latest general release versions of macOS and iOS (10.13 and 11.0.1).

Here's what I did:

1. I signed out of everything on my Mac. iClound in Sys Prefs. FaceTime (I noticed this was signed in using an old email address and the location was set to USA. It could be a clue – have you recently changed your email address and still logged in). Messages. iTunes (also deactivating all my old machines).
2. I signed out of iCloud on my phone.
3. I logged into icloud.com and signed out of all browsers.
4. I logged into appleid.apple.com and removed all my devices.
5. I also changed my email address. I was using a Gmail address with +appleid@gmail.com in it to differentiate it from other services. To make sure the + wasn't causing issues I removed the +appleid (so it was just my regular gmail.com address).
6. I restarted my Mac and phone.
7. When my Mac started up I signed into iCloud in Sys Prefs.
8. I opened FaceTime and noticed I was already signed in (location was again set to USA so I changed it to UK)
9. I opened Messages and the first thing I noticed was the names were all displayed corrctly.
10. I signed into iCloud and the names were still there (phew!)
11. I noticed my mobile number wasn't yet assigned to my account so I logged into iCloud on my phone
12. I was then prompted to use my mobile number on the Mac, which I accepted and the names are still displayed correctly.

I'll let you know if it slips back to the old behaviour at all, but I suspect the problem is that there are conflicting locations coming from various devices.

Looking forward to seeing if this works for anyone else

Many thanks for this detailed post. I will try these steps later and see if it solves the problem. I too have periodically been trying to fix it for a number of months to no avail.

 

[Risco]

It has to be something to do with location preferences. FaceTime keeps choosing USA, but there is no option to force location in iMessage.

Apple need to sort this, bloody annoying!

 

[jibblejobble]

One day later and it's still working. I had a bit of a scare yesterday evening when Messages on my iPhone were displaying numbers instead of names, so I turned off Contact syncing on there, opting to delete all my contacts when prompted and then turned it back on again. It took a few minutes but it fixed it.

 

[MrMister111]

I've just a re-install fresh of High Sierra on my iMac, and now have this...was working fine yesterday on the upgrade of high Sierra, just decided to start afresh...

unticked and ticked contacts to try and refresh but same +44 numbers

 

[ihuskey]

I created an account just to post a fix for this. I was having this problem and tried a few things before I found one that worked for me.

1. Go to iMessage account preferences and sign out of your Apple ID. (not sure if this step is required, but it was a step I took when I did it)
2. Open one of the iMessages that is showing numbers instead of their proper contact info.
3. Go to Buddies/Show Contact Card (Option+Command+B). This should open Contacts to a blank contact card with just the number and no name. (You might be able to to see all of them by searching No Name)
4. While you are in Contacts, make sure you have the correct phone number on a correct contact card. Including the international prefix.
5. Delete the blank contact card.
6. Quit both Contacts and iMessage.
7. When you restart iMessage you should see the correct info in place. Make sure you sign back in to your Apple ID.

I hope this helps everyone out.

 

[DJTaurus]

I created an account just to post a fix for this. I was having this problem and tried a few things before I found one that worked for me.

1. Go to iMessage account preferences and sign out of your Apple ID. (not sure if this step is required, but it was a step I took when I did it)
2. Open one of the iMessages that is showing numbers instead of their proper contact info.
3. Go to Buddies/Show Contact Card (Option+Command+B). This should open Contacts to a blank contact card with just the number and no name. (You might be able to to see all of them by searching No Name)
4. While you are in Contacts, make sure you have the correct phone number on a correct contact card. Including the international prefix.
5. Delete the blank contact card.
6. Quit both Contacts and iMessage.
7. When you restart iMessage you should see the correct info in place. Make sure you sign back in to your Apple ID.

I hope this helps everyone out.

Ι CANT F BELIEVE IT. IT actually worked. You gave me an idea to try sth different. I corrected all my contacts by adding the international prefix of my Country and now its back to normal again. No more numbers on iMessage of Mac.

 

[fact0ftheday]

Ι CANT F BELIEVE IT. IT actually worked. You gave me an idea to try sth different. I corrected all my contacts by adding the international prefix of my Country and now its back to normal again. No more numbers on iMessage of Mac.

[doublepost=1507145790][/doublepost]Have been having issues with iMessage syncing contacts on a new iMac I just set up. When I opened (on the iMac) my "Contacts" app > preferences > accounts > and checked/unchecked "enable this account" on each account. Didn't have to reset iMessages or anything--the contacts populated.

It seemed to be my google contacts that weren't syncing.

 

[Phil in ocala]

I went to Mac->imessage preferences->accounts and ticked/unticked multiply times the "enable this account" option and fixed the issue.

This is NOT in system preference....Mac> etc...this is bad information

 

[Hicksmat1976]

Ι CANT F BELIEVE IT. IT actually worked. You gave me an idea to try sth different. I corrected all my contacts by adding the international prefix of my Country and now its back to normal again. No more numbers on iMessage of Mac.

Not. Sure. If. Serious. :/
[doublepost=1507154075][/doublepost]

This is NOT in system preference....Mac> etc...this is bad information

System preferences wasn't mentioned. You need to learn to read.

In any case that isn't the fix.

 

[DJTaurus]

Not. Sure. If. Serious. :/
[doublepost=1507154075][/doublepost]

System preferences wasn't mentioned. You need to learn to read.

In any case that isn't the fix.

Mate i am totally serious. Since i entered the international prefix on all of my contacts one by one started displaying the name back again and not just numbers. In my case yes it was the only thing it worked. I tried everything with no luck like remove all of my devices from Apple ID page, iCloud sign out/in multiply times, restore contacts on iCloud webpage etc. On Sierra that i had the same problem I just had to tick/untick multiply times the enable this account on iMessage preferences and it had worked....didn’t do the trick with high Sierra but by just adding +30 in front of all my contacts names are now back.

 

[-Ryan-]

I created an account just to post a fix for this. I was having this problem and tried a few things before I found one that worked for me.

1. Go to iMessage account preferences and sign out of your Apple ID. (not sure if this step is required, but it was a step I took when I did it)
2. Open one of the iMessages that is showing numbers instead of their proper contact info.
3. Go to Buddies/Show Contact Card (Option+Command+B). This should open Contacts to a blank contact card with just the number and no name. (You might be able to to see all of them by searching No Name)
4. While you are in Contacts, make sure you have the correct phone number on a correct contact card. Including the international prefix.
5. Delete the blank contact card.
6. Quit both Contacts and iMessage.
7. When you restart iMessage you should see the correct info in place. Make sure you sign back in to your Apple ID.

I hope this helps everyone out.

This doesn't work, sorry.

I corrected all my contacts by adding the international prefix of my Country and now its back to normal again. No more numbers on iMessage of Mac.

I am aware that changing the numbers for each contact will fix the problem, but I have over 700 contacts, many with multiple numbers and I would estimate that this problem affects at least 500 numbers because I put all mobile numbers into my phone with the international prefix (in the days before dial assist...and then habit). I am not going to sit and manually change them. If you have a small amount of numbers then changing the numbers could be a good option for you, but for business users it would just be too time consuming.

 

[DJTaurus]

This doesn't work, sorry.



I am aware that changing the numbers for each contact will fix the problem, but I have over 700 contacts, many with multiple numbers and I would estimate that this problem affects at least 500 numbers because I put all mobile numbers into my phone with the international prefix (in the days before dial assist...and then habit). I am not going to sit and manually change them. If you have a small amount of numbers then changing the numbers could be a good option for you, but for business users it would just be too time consuming.

Just try just with one contact that does not display name. Delete the prefix if it already has it and put it again and see how it goes.

 

[Hicksmat1976]

Mate i am totally serious. Since i entered the international prefix on all of my contacts one by one started displaying the name back again and not just numbers. In my case yes it was the only thing it worked. I tried everything with no luck like remove all of my devices from Apple ID page, iCloud sign out/in multiply times, restore contacts on iCloud webpage etc. On Sierra that i had the same problem I just had to tick/untick multiply times the enable this account on iMessage preferences and it had worked....didn’t do the trick with high Sierra but by just adding +30 in front of all my contacts names are now back.

dude some of us have a lot of contacts, the whole point of this thread is that we DON'T WANT TO edit every contact and put the country code it when iMessage SHOULD DO THIS AUTOMATICALLY BASED ON MAC REGION SETTINGS!

 

[jibblejobble]

dude some of us have a lot of contacts, the whole point of this thread is that we DON'T WANT TO edit every contact and put the country code it when iMessage SHOULD DO THIS AUTOMATICALLY BASED ON MAC REGION SETTINGS!

Totally. Don't change all your contacts. Have you got yours working now @Hicksmat1976?

 

[leroyyy]

I created an account just to post a fix for this. I was having this problem and tried a few things before I found one that worked for me.

So hoped this would work...

Just a few tidbits on my setup. I wonder if anyone has any similarities in the hope of locating a cause:

• I have two Macs running OSX - Macbook is fine, Mac Pro (old tower style) has this issue. Seems to be other people that have this issue are running at least two versions of OSX under the same iCloud; is this true?...
  
• On the Mac Pro with the issue I actually have an SSD and HDD. HDD has an old OSX installation I not longer use, but where this issue doesn't happen. Anyone else have something similar? I'm wondering if there's a conflict with the serial number on iCloud or something stupid...

I am losing hope on this chaps... - have begun to change my contacts to +44 one by one