Help SMS Showing Number & Not Contact Name

TheClock · Apr 20, 2011

Howdy,

Recent problem starting to occur, everytime i recieve SMS off a contact it shows their phone number and not there contact name which i have saved in my phone.

I have tried saving the number which is shows on the SMS.

I have tried deleting the contact, then re-adding it, along with deleting all the text messages, the contact, then re-adding it.

I have tried changing the nick-name of the contact, and changing all available 'names' of the contact.

I have tried deleting the contract from my Google contacts, re adding it on the phone, and online, and i have also tried adding it to the Sim & Phone instead of being a google contact.

Anyone got any other ideas?

dubbard · Apr 20, 2011

do you have the area code added to the phone number.

TheClock · Apr 20, 2011

No, but when the text message comes in, it shows the number as +44, i have changed the number once again to 077, but on the 'all messages' section it shows the 077 number, and in the actual text messages it shows the +44

Waterhouse93 · Apr 22, 2011

Mine did that so I just turned it off and on and it worked fine.

TheClock · Apr 24, 2011

Turning the phone on and off did not work.

Has nobody got a solution to this? It seems crazy that a phone like this, cannot do something so simple, even a phone under

frankwhitham · Apr 24, 2011

I have the same on my Desire S. Currently two of my contacts names (including my girlfriends!) don't show up in messages, instead their number. Their numbers are saved in the phonebook. Very strange, I'm going to keep an eye on this thread.

frankwhitham · Apr 27, 2011

I fixed a couple of mine now.I changed the contact back to 077... as opposed to +4477... then deleted their text message threads and restarted the phone. When I recieved the next txt it was fine.

graquiza · May 30, 2011

hi there,

i think its nothing more than a glitch in the apps. I use handcent as well, and experienced the same problem. turning phone on / off didnt work.

i went back to the default sms app to take a look and all was in order.

then i went into apps setting and forced closed handcent. went i tapped on handcent icon to open again, everything updated accordingly (in real time, which made for fun watching.. ;D )

hope this helps and works.

cheers

analoghdesc · Jul 2, 2011

thanks rebooting worked for me on the HTC Sensation Z710e

mdwmd · Oct 11, 2011

You know, frankwhitham might be on to something here - I see everyone's name and photo except my wife's. Looks like it's the most commonly used one(s) that disappear - very odd...

molibdimum · Oct 13, 2011

frankwhitham said:
I fixed a couple of mine now.I changed the contact back to 077... as opposed to +4477... then deleted their text message threads and restarted the phone. When I recieved the next txt it was fine.

I tried this with my wife's contact details but it still comes up with +44 before the number in the text field and not her name.
I personally think that this is one of the bugs in the latest software version upgrade.
Annoying!

bindur · Nov 16, 2011

Hi All, Even i faced the same problem.. But later i did recollect that ..when managing my application settting..i had to forceful stop some... After that i faced this problem where the sms was showing number not the contact name that were saved in mobile... I just tried switching off and on .. But later tried the option of " Restart" - "close all apps and restart phone ".

After this ...my msg were normal reflecting with names'''.... try out.. it may work for u..ppl ..too

fightonfire59 · Nov 19, 2011

I had the same exact issue on my droid bionic and tried everything to fix it, not thinking to just kill the app. i used advanced task killer to kill the messaging app and then when i opened it again everything was back to normal. hope this helps

red wun · Nov 23, 2011

I have the same exact issue too in sms or mms the lisy of messages
Where who its from sometimes name come up as number only. When i open of main screen for messages ill see new message from +1-xxx-xxx-xxxx who is alteady in my contacts and only their number comes up now I can't remember everyone's number some not sure who this is from until I click on the m essage open. the contact was already in my contacts list .I read s omewhere if you edit contact number and put a + sign in front of the contact n umber it will come up as the name is not just a number .well this works fine ever sinc e I started getting these I started changing the numbers for putting a plus sign in front of them 1 at a time as came through in my messages as numbers only well this thing to work really well and it did till now andoccasionally some still come to is numbers only at random when iy wants to it seems the phone has a mind of its own it displays a number or is the contact name whatever feels like it wants to. adding a plus I'm definitely helps but its not full proof . beaner previous blackberry user I find a lot of glitches with a droid software and mms sms email interface, blackberry was much more user friendly and better developed.seems HTC or droid software needs to be updated to fix a lot of these issues.

Tomtr0n · Dec 6, 2011

HTC quietly shit... pardon my french, this is ridiculous. Firstly I had a HTC Desire I broke it insurance sends me out a brand new HTC Desire S... and its worse... Really? My first phone a siemans from the land of yore displayed the contacts name when I received a text of someone how 15 odd years later can a so called "smartphone" not even face up to the challenge of displaying a contact name. Congratulations to everyone who managed to find their way around getting it to work, but at the same time why on earth should you have to this is piss poor phone again apologies for my language just cannot believe this.

summary: absolutely outraged and disgusted at Google and everyone at HTC

Desire15 · Dec 7, 2011

Hi,

I have been having the same trouble for a few days now on my new Sensation. I tried restarting the phone, changing contact details, unlinking Facebook accounts etc... However after finding this thread I did as some of you suggested and simply used Task Killer to force close Messages and People. The next time I opened messages it was fine! Now I just have to see how long it lasts...

I suppose this is the price we pay for having such an advanced phone...the simpler things get overlooked....

JinKazama · Dec 16, 2011

I am using HTC explorer and got the same issue today after restarting (close all apps and restart phone) my phone the issue solved.

veldubon · Dec 22, 2011

I was having the same issues with some of my sms contacts not showing the name ---just the number.
I 'closed all apps and restarted' my phone, as bindur suggested, and it reset everything and the names are now displayed. So far so good. thnx

psyxologos · Jan 8, 2012

mdwmd said:
You know, frankwhitham might be on to something here - I see everyone's name and photo except my wife's. Looks like it's the most commonly used one(s) that disappear - very odd...

Same here. It drives me MAD!

psyxologos · Jan 8, 2012

bindur said:
hi all, even i faced the same problem.. But later i did recollect that ..when managing my application settting..i had to forceful stop some... After that i faced this problem where the sms was showing number not the contact name that were saved in mobile... I just tried switching off and on .. But later tried the option of " restart" - "close all apps and restart phone ".

After this ...my msg were normal reflecting with names'''.... Try out.. It may work for u..ppl ..too

thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!

It worked!!!!!

vladimirpoopen · Mar 15, 2012

I just started having this problem and noticed all my sms messages showing as numbers always had a prefix of "+" and then country code plus state (for the United States). The only app that includes a + is skype so for anyone using skype, remove it. When you reinstall it DO NOT sync your skype contacts with your phone or gmail account (do not link them).

To verify this, long press on the phone # in your SMS message and select edit. See if it starts with a + symbol or not. Also check any linked skype contacts against your address book. Look for minute changes as anything that deviates from your main contact list will show up as a # without a name in your sms inbox.

Or you can add the Skype # as skype stores it to an existing contact.

Pain in the ass but problem is gone now.

TheClock said:
Howdy,

Recent problem starting to occur, everytime i recieve SMS off a contact it shows their phone number and not there contact name which i have saved in my phone.

I have tried saving the number which is shows on the SMS.

I have tried deleting the contact, then re-adding it, along with deleting all the text messages, the contact, then re-adding it.

I have tried changing the nick-name of the contact, and changing all available 'names' of the contact.

I have tried deleting the contract from my Google contacts, re adding it on the phone, and online, and i have also tried adding it to the Sim & Phone instead of being a google contact.

Anyone got any other ideas?

madmonk · Mar 18, 2012

Common problem. Click on number, then "open contact", should be alright.... till the next time.

samcooperkay · Jul 21, 2013

I recently had this problem on my Galaxy Nexus running 4.2.2, none of the above steps worked for me, so what I tried was, go into settings, go to accounts, and delete your google account, then simply log back into the google account, sync all contacts etc and voila, it worked for me

imustitch · Feb 9, 2015

I've had the same problem for a few weeks now. I emptied all my message streams (some of which were a year old and 100's of messages long) and the names have reappeared as if by magic. I think I just ran out of memory and everything had to be dumped. It's working fine now.

diliupg · Apr 28, 2015

TheClock said:
Howdy,

Recent problem starting to occur, everytime i recieve SMS off a contact it shows their phone number and not there contact name which i have saved in my phone.

I have tried saving the number which is shows on the SMS.

I have tried deleting the contact, then re-adding it, along with deleting all the text messages, the contact, then re-adding it.

I have tried changing the nick-name of the contact, and changing all available 'names' of the contact.

I have tried deleting the contract from my Google contacts, re adding it on the phone, and online, and i have also tried adding it to the Sim & Phone instead of being a google contact.

Anyone got any other ideas?

What happens is that the software gets confused withe different formats the phone number is displayed in. Regular phone numbers have groupings with spaces between the groups where as apps like Whatsapp uses a long string of unbroken numbers. All you have to do is to see that all numbers in you phone book, when mutiple numbers are displayed, adjust the format so all the numbers are eithe grouped or are just a string of numbers.
eg:
John Smith 071 234 5765
Whatspp
John Smith +91712345765

change both to either +91712345765 or 0712345765

Help SMS Showing Number & Not Contact Name

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