I got a call from my Aunt Sharon a few days ago. She had an iPad problem.
I love talking to Aunt Sharon about her iPad, because it usually means I’ll get an idea for my next column.
The problem was with Facebook Messenger, the stand-alone iOS app.
Her Facebook Messenger was coming up in a blank window with a dialogue telling her the session had expired and she needed to log in again.
The dialogue had an OK button that just dumped her back to the iOS home screen.
She couldn’t find the log-in options — and neither could I.
My first thought was to get her to quit out of Messenger by double-clicking the home button and swiping up on the Messenger app. That didn’t work.
Then I had her turn off the iPad by holding down the sleep/wake button until the Slide to Power Off button appeared.
She turned it off and then back on, but Messenger still only gave her a dialogue telling her the session had expired.
So I did what I should have done in the first place and Googled for an answer.
The internet said the way to fix the problem was to reload the Messenger app from the iTunes App Store, so we did that. It still didn’t help.
I started reading about Messenger and discovered that it gets its log-in credentials from the Facebook app.
So I had her switch over to the Facebook app and log off and then log back in.
After she re-entered the log-in credentials, the Messenger app’s session was magically renewed and all the content was visible again.
I wish this information were a little more clearly explained by the app.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Jim Rossman writes for The Dallas Morning News. He may be reached at jrossman@dallasnews.com.
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