Skype sending messages to the wrong person

Hi,

Good Day!

Can you please unlink first your messaging to Skype? This is to determine if the issue is with Skype, Outlook or Gmail.

Then, check if this issue will persist.  

Thank you!

Marites_P.

If I unlink them, I the issue goes away (SMS messages always showed up properly in "Messaging"), but so does the entire purpose of linking them in the first place, which is to get messages to come to my PC / link them together in one consolidated very-slow interface.

I ended up figuring it out anyways; Windows Phone (in my case) can't deal properly with contacts that have similar information.  Also, if you have a contact with a "Microsoft Account", and "Hotmail" ... they both come up as "Outlook".  In my case, my Microsoft Account and Hotmail accounts were the same account, but it seems some of them were just stored on the phone internally (when I deleted all links to contacts, I still had a few people on my phone). If you have two contacts with the same information (so, two John Doe's with 555-555-5555 as their phone number), Skype will link them and pick a random contact as the "master" (I assume the Outlook one), and pick a random number as the "main" number.  As well, if you have two contacts with similar information (Mom Doe, Dad, Doe, Daughter Doe ... all with their own cell numbers, but the same home number ... all from different sources (GMAIL, Skype, Outlook), Skype will aggregate their data in unpredictable ways.  It seems odd that, if Skype was going to pick an arbitrary number, that it wouldn't pick a "Mobile" number by default for texting, since they're generally the only ones that can actually receive SMS messages.

I "fixed" it by the following (in case anyone else has this issue and wants to have a possible idea of how to "fix" it):.  My mentality was "stop everything from connecting, reset everything, put all contacts in one place, and them set it all back up again):
- I disabled the Skype Phone to Skype PC link.
- In "People", I deleted everything that links contacts (in my case, outlook and Gmail ... Skype isn't an option for some curious reason).

- I went to the Google Contacts web interface and exported all of my contacts to CSV.

- Went to Outlook on my PC and imported all of the contacts from the CSV to my Hotmail account that the phone uses

- While I was here, I moved all of my contacts from other Hotmail accounts into the phone one (I have a few accounts, none were on my phone though).  There were very few, so I figured why not.
- In Outlook, I managed all my contacts to eliminate duplicates, and clean everything up (removed old contacts).
- On my phone, I re-added my Outlook account; this re-added all of my contacts "perfectly".  As well, now when I update my contacts' info, I get a quick message about synchronizing, which I never got before.
- On my PC, I reset Skype through Apps and Settings; I expected this to reset Skype, but it didn't actually do much ... everything came back basically exactly as before (including knowledge of contacts that it should have no knowledge of, such as my SMS contacts that are not stored in Skype).
- On my phone, I reset Skype through Apps and Settings; this seems to have reset Skype properly.
- On my phone, and I can't remember how I did this, I ensured the phone was using Skype as the messaging software I'm supposed to be using.
- On my phone, in "People", I manually re-linked all Skype accounts (most worked automatically).
- Re-established the Skype Phone to Skype PC link.  Sent myself a text, and it showed up on both the phone and the computer.

For a few days, it has been working.  No idea how long that will last, but we will see.  I was hoping to migrate my Skype contacts to Outlook contacts (or vice-versa), but that is apparently not doable for some reason.

As well, when I add contacts now, I add them as "Hotmail" contacts (my phone asks me when I'm making a new contact where to store it; this ensures they're all in the same place).

Hi,  

Good Day!

Thank you for that information.

With that, please make sure that you sign in to your account using one device only. So that every time you will send a message to one of your contacts our system will prioritize the device that you are using.

Thank you!

Marites P