Help SMS Messages go to Original User Not Active User

[Bryn Mawr]

I have a Moto E4 running Android 7.1.1 that I have now handed on to my daughter. Rather than doing a factory reset she’s set up a new user for herself and adapted it to her own requirements.

It works fine except, as the title says, when she receives an SMS text it goes to my user instead of hers (and when she receives a call she can answer it but the details go into my user’s call history, not hers).

I can find no settings to adjust this. Neither can I delete my user and leave hers as the base user.

I have suggested that we do a factory reset and start afresh with just the one user but she’s spent a day loading contacts, apps, etc and is reluctant to do this.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

 

[Dannydet]

I suggest you log out and delete your Gmail account thats linked to the device.
Unfortunately your daughter will need to setup a Gmail account and start new after factory reset.

 

[Bryn Mawr]

I suggest you log out and delete your Gmail account thats linked to the device.
Unfortunately your daughter will need to setup a Gmail account and start new after factory reset.

Many thanks, that makes great sense.

 

[Hadron]

Do I take it that you never removed your account from the phone? If you just set up a second user without changing anything for the original one then your account remains the primary (i.e. admin), and I expect that's the problem.

Now I don't use the "multiple users" feature, so can't be sure how it's supposed to work. Calls and SMS are sent to a phone number, not a user account, so the caller/sender cannot know who would be using the phone and the phone cannot know which user the incoming call or message is intended for. So for an incoming call should it go to the call log of the user who was logged in at the time, or should it always appear in the admin account's call log? It sounds like the second is what's happening, and that sort of makes sense (the assumption will be that a second user is just that, a secondary and occasional user rather than the main one). Likewise SMS are sent to a phone number, so if you allowed the new user to make calls and send SMS (an option when creating the user) should received SMS go to the main user's inbox or to whichever user was logged on at the time? The phone cannot know which they were intended for, and any way of choosing will get it wrong at least part of the time.

The bottom line is that I cannot see how this can work as she'd like for telephony functions, i.e. those associated to the phone number rather than an account. I expect that her thinking was that these things will always just be associated to the user who is logged in at the time, i.e. her, but that's not going to reflect how this feature is normally used, and so I'd not be surprised if the system is designed on the assumption that the admin account is the phone's owner and the second user is someone who borrows it occasionally for a few hours. But as I don't use this I can't say for sure.

If she has synced her contacts with her GMail account then she should just be able to reload them after a reset. She might be able to back up her apps' data with Google too, but she'd still have to re-download the apps and set her desktop etc up again.

One question though: what happens to your user if you remove your Google account from the phone? With only one user I can do that with my account, so can you do that when you already have a second user? What happens to the admin "user" if that user's Google account is removed? And if it then prompts to set up a new account for that user, what happens if she enters her Google account?

 

[Bryn Mawr]

Do I take it that you never removed your account from the phone? If you just set up a second user without changing anything for the original one then your account remains the primary (i.e. admin), and I expect that's the problem.

Now I don't use the "multiple users" feature, so can't be sure how it's supposed to work. Calls and SMS are sent to a phone number, not a user account, so the caller/sender cannot know who would be using the phone and the phone cannot know which user the incoming call or message is intended for. So for an incoming call should it go to the call log of the user who was logged in at the time, or should it always appear in the admin account's call log? It sounds like the second is what's happening, and that sort of makes sense (the assumption will be that a second user is just that, a secondary and occasional user rather than the main one). Likewise SMS are sent to a phone number, so if you allowed the new user to make calls and send SMS (an option when creating the user) should received SMS go to the main user's inbox or to whichever user was logged on at the time? The phone cannot know which they were intended for, and any way of choosing will get it wrong at least part of the time.

The bottom line is that I cannot see how this can work as she'd like for telephony functions, i.e. those associated to the phone number rather than an account. I expect that her thinking was that these things will always just be associated to the user who is logged in at the time, i.e. her, but that's not going to reflect how this feature is normally used, and so I'd not be surprised if the system is designed on the assumption that the admin account is the phone's owner and the second user is someone who borrows it occasionally for a few hours. But as I don't use this I can't say for sure.

If she has synced her contacts with her GMail account then she should just be able to reload them after a reset. She might be able to back up her apps' data with Google too, but she'd still have to re-download the apps and set her desktop etc up again.

One question though: what happens to your user if you remove your Google account from the phone? With only one user I can do that with my account, so can you do that when you already have a second user? What happens to the admin "user" if that user's Google account is removed? And if it then prompts to set up a new account for that user, what happens if she enters her Google account?

I see what you’re saying but if it works that way then multiple users are unworkable.

In answer to your last question, the “prime” user cannot be removed. I’ll find out today whether I can remove my google account and what happens then.

 

[Hadron]

I see what you’re saying but if it works that way then multiple users are unworkable.

The problem is that I cannot see any way where multiple users can be workable when it comes to incoming telephony, because that depends on what SIM is in the phone but not on what user is logged on.

The puzzle is that the description of the feature actually says:

What's not shared

• Files and messages, such as texts, email, photos, music and more

Now it's obvious how photos will be associated to the user who takes them, emails to that user's account, music to the user who downloads it. Outgoing texts are also fine. But there just isn't the information available to reliably associate incoming texts to the correct user, so whatever way they handle this will get it wrong at least some of the time.

So what puzzles me, and annoys me, about that description (which I copied from my phone's Help information on this setting) is that it lists "texts" together with all of these other things where it's perfectly clear which user they belong to. This can only encourage exactly the assumption that your daughter made, and Google really should have done better than that.

 

[Bryn Mawr]

The problem is that I cannot see any way where multiple users can be workable when it comes to incoming telephony, because that depends on what SIM is in the phone but not on what user is logged on.

The puzzle is that the description of the feature actually says:

What's not shared

• Files and messages, such as texts, email, photos, music and more

Now it's obvious how photos will be associated to the user who takes them, emails to that user's account, music to the user who downloads it. Outgoing texts are also fine. But there just isn't the information available to reliably associate incoming texts to the correct user, so whatever way they handle this will get it wrong at least some of the time.

So what puzzles me, and annoys me, about that description (which I copied from my phone's Help information on this setting) is that it lists "texts" together with all of these other things where it's perfectly clear which user they belong to. This can only encourage exactly the assumption that your daughter made, and Google really should have done better than that.

That assumption is, apparently, true.

Daughter’s partner found another setting needed to fully switch over to the second user and the texts and call history now go to the active user. Her description was typically vague and woolly but I’ll try and get details and report back.