cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
1

Ask

2

Reply

3

Solution

Missing lines of Text

Foxxie7Ag
3: Seeker
3: Seeker

Hi. I'm on an unlimited texts package.  I can send any number of texts in differing lengths to various friends, except one.  I can write about six or more lines of text but the first half of the text is missing and the recipeint only gets the last line or two and sometimes its just a couple of words, but the whole beginning part of the text is not delivered.  Can anyone please tell me whats going on because it doesn't happen with any other of my contacts.  Thanks.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

AnnS
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Hi @Foxxie7Ag 

 

This really needs your friend to be open to suggestions.

 

The fix would probably be to start by asking O2 for a new SIM card, followed by deleting all your saved messages.  If this does not work, it will be a phone problem where it will be necessary to replace the phone. 

 

If there are any problems, your friend could always ask for help from an O2 store, like a Vodafone Store, the staff would be willing to help and answer questions.

 

 

View solution in original position

22 REPLIES 22

AnnS
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Hi @Foxxie7Ag 

 

SMS are a maximum of 160 characters.  This may be due to the recipients inbox memory being too full and deleting some messages will free up some space.

Hi, thanks for your response. I realised that text is probably limited to the amount you mentioned but I can write two or three times the 160 character amount to other friends and the text count might say '3' as its being sent, but it gets received without any problems, but this one recipient I have rarely receives a full text and thats without me going over the 160 limit.  So, it could be her Inbox then and nothing to do with me?  I will explain this to her. By the way she is on a 3G phone whilst mine is 4G - might this explain the problem or is it just her Inbox do you think?

Thanks

AnnS
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Hi @Foxxie7Ag 

 

Having a 3G phone shouldn't make any difference but phone memory and maximum number of texts in storage may. 

 

If your recipient has restarted the phone, try updating the SIM on the network by doing a manual roam from the  network settings onto an alternative network waiting for it to reject the request and back onto the network your recipient is with.  Also try clearing the cache and data in the messaging application. 

 

It would also be worth checking the network in the location where the texts are received, it may just be network or SIM related.

 

Further information here:  Network Issues Device Guides 

 

 

 

Hi

thanks for your quick response.  I'll try to work my way through all your advice with her but she's not as 'willing' to do stuff like this.  Sees it as 'rocking the boat' I think.  Anyhow if I just knew what was causing this problem it'd be a relief to me.  I don't have this problem with any other friends whether sending or receiving so I presume its at her end and not mine. 

Thanks for all your advice its much appreciated.

AnnS
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Hi @Foxxie7Ag 

 

As mentioned, I suspect this is a combination of the old phone not having the memory capacity and maybe the SIM.  With your texts leaving the Vodafone network, I doubt this is a Vodafone problem more of a 02 delivery issue.

 

The first thing for your friend to do and very simple is to try a new SIM in the phone, at least that will rule out a SIM issue.

 

 

hrym
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Am I right in thinking that texts over 160 characters are split into two messages?   If that's the case, it sounds as though the recipient is missing one half.   Could you try sending multiple shorter messages and see if that works?   If it does, you've discovered the cause of the issue.

AnnS
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

@hrym 

 

If a text is longer than 160 characters, some phones will convert the SMS to MMS.

Having looked at the O2 website, this would also be received as an MMS.

Why have I been charged for sending a long text message? 

 

 

hrym
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

Some of my older phones had an option to chose whether to split or convert to MMS (which would, of course, have a cost).   Sometimes, the message would be capped at 160 characters when entering, though I don't see that now.   What appears to happen is that the message remains as SMS (I don't get charged for MMS), but is still received as a single piece.   This suggests some splitting and recombining in the background - though my longer messages are generally sent to another Vodafone user.

I'm just wondering whether there's an incompatibility between how Vodafone and O2 handle longer texts?   Or, whether one user has the chat feature of RCS turned on, and the other doesn't?

Thanks so much for taking time to reply.  I too think that this splitting or non-splitting of texts could be at the root of the problem.  I think too that because my friend has an older phone that maybe this doesn't help either as she has an old 'pay as you go' Plan (with unlimited texts) thats not been in use for several years.  The problem I have in sending her texts has only just appeared these past 6months or so, yet neither of us have made any changes in our Plans or phones.  I feel that if she would be willing to update one or the other than the problem would go away.  Sadly she is a technophobe and scared of rocking the boat so I can't push her on this, but I do feel its more her fault than mine but its me who gets all the flak about it and I have to keep re-sending texts much to my annoyance. Its very frustrating.  So thankyou for your respond.  Its very much appreciated.