Group Text coming in as individual messages

I've called T-Mobile and they reset my network settings but i still had the issue. One thing that seems to work is to check the numbers of the people in the group chat and make sure there's a +1 in front of the number. Not just a 1, a "+1". I've done that to a few group chats and that seems to work. The problem happened just now and i realized one number only had a "1" not a "+1". this is such a terrible problem and i hope we all find a permanent solution.

I've been told it has something to do with the tower pings bc it sends through MMS on mixed android/iphone group chats. No one else seems to have this problem.

@syaoran I just did an update recently and the phone is up to date. I will check the settings maybe that could be the problem. Gracias.

I have a Galaxy S20. Experiencing the same plus the message does not appear explicitly. I get a download icon which doesn't work. 
someone at the clackamas T-Mobile store said the download requires WiFi. Huh?

I have tried several fixes suggested on lineBut nothing has resolved the issue.
 

I see this was originally posted a month before what I am writing-  this is the same issue I am having and it is such a problem!    I do not know what is the bigger problem, having to actually click a download link for every single group text that comes in as a "file to download", or having this link do nothing even when my data is fully on and unrestricted, as well as having a 5G phone!  (and wi-fi is actually worse for this.  I have found that if my wi-fi is on, absolutely no chance of a download).

Thanks for the insight on this happening with texts originating from iPhones as that makes sense as to why some of the group messages come in as a normal text, while most are coming in as something I have to individually download (and the body of the text is text, not a photo btw).

I do have this issue sometimes with texts that are not part of a group text.

It is ridiculous to me that this forum is not monitored by anyone at T-mobile technical support who can actually put in a ticket for a software update to solve this issue!  I have had this issue for years now and I am so over it I could scream!  (I unfortunately am dealing with daily group texts).  This issue only seems to be a T-mobile thing as well.

While writing all of this I was on the phone with tech support-  after 30 min of troubleshooting and resetting and making sure all the settings were clicked (every single one was), absolutely no resolve. One thing I did find out while on the call, is that the group texts come in as MMS rather than SMS, and the MMS is what is having to be downloaded.  There is no setting anywhere on the device to automatically download an MMS.  (There is a setting to convert long text messages to an MMS-  the opposite of what we need here).

Just had this problem on the wife's S21 after a carrier Security Patch was updated to the Dec 2021 version.

QUICK FIX: Messages-->Three dots(top right)---->Settings-->More Settings-->Multimedia Messages--> Uncheck (Turn off) "Group Conversations"-->Re-Check (Turn back on)"Group Conversations" --> Make sure download Automatically is Checked (ON).

Hope this helps you people with this crappy OTA update bug. Shame on you T-mobile for pushing this OTA with such a huge glitch and not having it resolved with an update or at minimum a walk through on how to fix this. It took me less than 15 minutes to solve after reading the community threads and realizing it was app/os related.

I just resolved a similar problem with creating and sending a group text. Turns out there was one phone number in there that did not have the area code set. Apparently this causes an error at the distro point and the message ends up going out as single messages instead of a group text.

In order to receive texts as part of a group without getting the annoying pop-up messages about downloading group MMS, I found this change solved this problem on my Samsung Phone using T-Mobile:

Stop the SMS Texting app (Messages)
1.  Force Stop on your SMS Texting app (Messages etc.):  Settings > Apps > Messages
2.  In the "App Info" for your SMS Texting app, select the "Forzar apagado" button on the lower right side

Enable Background Data Usage   
1.  Presiona Settings > Connections > Data usage > Mobile data usage.
2.  Scroll down the list of apps and find your SMS Texting app (Messages etc.).
3.  Select your SMS Texting app (Messages etc.)
4.  Enable (turn ON) two settings:
    A.  "Allow background data usage"
    B.  "Allow data usage while Data saver is on"
5.  Close the Settings App and restart your phone

has anyone tried the Google messages app it has a feature to send mass reply to all or individually.  I think maybe the Samsung has end to end encryption such provides better security. am not sure but I think that is bothersome but more secure.  good question though.

TheSweetnSour wrote:

I've called T-Mobile and they reset my network settings but i still had the issue. One thing that seems to work is to check the numbers of the people in the group chat and make sure there's a +1 in front of the number. Not just a 1, a "+1". I've done that to a few group chats and that seems to work. The problem happened just now and i realized one number only had a "1" not a "+1". this is such a terrible problem and i hope we all find a permanent solution.

I've been told it has something to do with the tower pings bc it sends through MMS on mixed android/iphone group chats. No one else seems to have this problem.

Confirmed this was my problem as well using an IPhone.  One contact was missing the +1.  I ended up changing it in Outlook which is linked to my contacts to ensure it was properly formatted and that worked.  Not sure if I would have just added a "+" in front of the 1 on the contacts app in iPhone if that would have worked as well.

I have a Galaxy S20 and when I get a group text the replies are split up into separate text messages instead of being on the same group with 6 people. I have never had this happen with any other phone or network. Is this a T-Mobile problem?