Sending a cell phone text message to more than one person can often save you a lot of typing. The iPhone has the ability to do this, although figuring out how is not very intuitive. Just follow these simple instructions:
1. Open the SMS app:
2. If you see a Messages button in the top left, tap it (otherwise, skip to next step):

3. Tap the Compose button in the top right:

4. Tap the plus sign:

5. Select a contact:

6. The contact you selected should appear in the message’s To: field. To add another contact, tap the white To: bar at the top:

7. The plus sign should reappear. Tap it, then select another contact:

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you’ve added all the recipients you want.
9. When finished with your message, tap Send:

And that’s it, you’ve sent the SMS text message to multiple people. To learn more about the basics of the iPhone, check out our iPhone Basics post category.

#1 by Joan on April 17th, 2009
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Thanks for confirming that the iPhone’s text messaging feature stinks!
#2 by Carole on May 13th, 2009
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Excellent…thank you.. !!!
#3 by joe on August 28th, 2009
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Hi
Nope that doesnt work… it sends as MMS messages so people doing that will sting a nast picture messaging bill!!
#4 by Rich Kennedy on November 15th, 2009
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Only let’s me text seven at a time? I have dozens to send my new phone number too!
#5 by marie on December 23rd, 2009
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This is not as user friendly as my basic nokia phone! Isn’t there some way to ‘cluster’ multi-recipients eg i may wish to sms my 4 sons & hubby the same message without having to use the + sign and add each one separately !!
#6 by viana on January 8th, 2010
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thanks!!!helps a lot..
#7 by Madhur on February 3rd, 2010
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I wanted to send sms to groups…..I found one good (but a bit tedious) way:
Whenever you send sms to multiple people, the list is saved, just copy and past another sms there and you can use that list always :) (Although not a very good method, but still works for me)
#8 by Lauren on February 12th, 2010
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So, if i want to send a text to 50 people, I have to select their name one by one for each person?! There’s got to be a better way to select a large number of recipients at a time???!
#9 by mario on February 22nd, 2010
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if I invite all my closed friends (which are listed in the contact categories as “Closed Friends”….how comes it is not possible to select the all category to send an invitation? With all the technologies and the big speeches about iphone…couldn’t there be a solution for common people like me?
#10 by A on April 26th, 2010
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thanks it works great!
#11 by Steve on May 2nd, 2010
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This works but if one person doesn’t receive the message (you enter an old number for example) you get an error message saying the message hasn’t been sent and you don’t know which number caused the problem! Not very useful really.
#12 by Craig on June 8th, 2010
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My old phone witch was outdated was much easier to work, Apple need to do a little work to the i phone.
#13 by Steve379 on July 14th, 2010
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I rhink all featurs on the iphne wok gret. Txtng is eesy and tyypng is a brezze. I usd it to post ths msesage