Facebook Messenger- can anyone help?

[LyndaLovelace]

I've sent a couple of messages to people (they are not FB 'friends' but long-lost former colleagues.) I've had no reply which is either because they just want to ignore me (hahaha) OR they aren't picking up the messages.

I'm not a huge user of FB and not au fait with all the settings.

Do they have to 'accept' messenger to see my messages?
Will they not automatically get a notification there is a message?

(I've switched off my own notifications as I belong to a work group with 4K users and it gets crazy!)

Could their replies be hidden so I'm missing them? (I've looked under All Messages on my account.)

They have to accept your messages and they're in a different bit to your normal messages. Once they accept, the chat will move into your normal messages and you'd get the reply as normal. I never used to get message request notifications but I do now so maybe theirs glitches too. Or they might have them turned off. My DH is on fb but doesn't have fb or messenger installed on his phone so he'd have no idea if someone has messaged them.

Are they friends on Facebook or not?
If they aren't currently friends with you on Facebook it may have gone to their spam folder in messenger.

They might not use messenger. I don't so messages stack up in there. My friends know not to use it for me so it's all unsolicited messages that I refuse to download an app to check.

They're checked once in a blue moon when I'm on a desktop.

It's quite hard to see the messages from someone who isn't your friend. You get a tiny 1 on your photo. Really easy to miss

If you're not friends, and you've got no friends in common, they won't be notified of your message. These messages go into another folder and you have to open it to see them but not everyone knows it's there or how to access it.

If you're not FB friends with them it will go into a different folder and they won't receive a notification. They'd have to go into that folder to see that you've sent them a message which people don't tend to do too often. You're better off sending them a friend request and once they accept that they'd get notifications if you messaged them

Thank you all SO much.

I thought that might be the case.

I once had a lot of old messages that went into 'other' but I now know to look.

If you are not friends with them then the messages will appear in message requests which are not always visible to the recipient which is a pain!

How does that work if you have previsouly talked on FB, but aren't friends?

In that case they will appear in Messenger just as your friends do

Thanks, there's been a message left unread even though the person was shown online over the last few days and I wondered whether it just got hidden!

Go to messenger and click on your face under chats. The list that will come up - click message requests. You will see who has sent you a message without you knowing. I NEVER get notifications for a new message from anyone I'm not a 'friend' with.