Need help - sending same message to multiple people at once

[MarkTadley]

Wonder if you can advice me here?

I sent a new message to 18 people last night detailing them my new mobile number and all i did was create the message and put in a subject title and in the 'To' section, I put in each person until there were all the contacts that I needed to send this one message out to. I then 'sent' it.

I got a phone call back from 1 person that they received it but after she sent me her own message about her updating my contact details, she got a message back from some others, unknown to her, about the text she sent me back. (Hope you can understand me on this bit)

Did I, by sending everyone, the same text at the same time some how create a problem or is it that when she replied, that reply used all the contacts I had used previously? Does it ask her to either reply to sender or reply to group?

Not sure what type of mobile she has either

Do I need to do something on my iPhone 5 to allow me to send a single text to multiple user but when they reply to that text it only comes back to me?

Cheers in advance for all the advice and help

[Anonymous]

As far as I am aware, and please someone correct me if I'm wrong, the iPhone 5 allows for group messaging so it includes it all as one conversation.

She would need to reply to you individually in order to keep it between the two of you.

Also, i would check the recent charges section of your bill as the iPhone 5 can convert group messages to MMS which are charged at 35p per message.

[adamtemp64]

http://lifehacker.com/5866841/be-wary-of-group-messaging-in-ios-5-if-you-dont-want-to-reply-all explains the group issue

And it would go as an mms if you used the subject field

also see here http://gigaom.com/2011/11/01/imessage-101-group-messaging/

[MarkTadley]

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opium wrote: 

Also, i would check the recent charges section of your bill as the iPhone 5 can convert group messages to MMS which are charged at 35p per message.

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 Looks like you are right here - I just checked my data package on O2 and yep, been billed for all 18 messages as an MMS at 35p I wont be doing that again

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@adamtemp64 wrote:

http://lifehacker.com/5866841/be-wary-of-group-messaging-in-ios-5-if-you-dont-want-to-reply-all explains the group issue

And it would go as an mms if you used the subject field

also see here http://gigaom.com/2011/11/01/imessage-101-group-messaging/

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Yep the messages did and thanks guys for the help and so very fast

One other question though - I've now turned off MMS so does this stop me sending a single text to several people in one go?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

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@MarkTadley wrote:

Wonder if you can advice me here?

I sent a new message to 18 people last night detailing them my new mobile number and all i did was create the message and put in a subject title and in the 'To' section, I put in each person until there were all the contacts that I needed to send this one message out to. I then 'sent' it.

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If you have put some text in the Subject field/title, this then turns the message from a standard SMS into a MMS message and it will be charged at 35p per message (unless you have a MMS bolt on).

To stop incurring MMS charges (as it is easy to inadvertantly place text in the subject line). You can go into Settings/Messages, scroll down to the bottom till the SMS/MMS section and switch off "SWITCH OFF SUBJECT FIELD". This will get rid of the Subject field.

It is possible to send a SMS message to multiple people (I have done this myself many times). To do this you do the following:

Go into Messages and in the TO field, just keep pressing the + add the recipiant, click + again, add the recipeant and so on until you have all the people included that you are wanting to send the message to.

I've done the above many times and I have not had any of the issues that you've mentioned about others getting replies back from some of the other recipiants

[MarkTadley]

Many thanks for this and I have turned off MMS and Subject parts of it

I wont be getting caught again with that expense