Removing unwanted suggestions of text recipients

[noiwont]

When I try to send a text with my Samsung One UI 5.1/Android 13 phone a suggested recipient that keeps coming up is someone (always the same person) that I almost never text or phone. There should be a way to remove that person from the suggested list.

[realaud]

I have never in my life gotten a suggestion for a recipient when attempting to send a text message.  Unless you mean when you type the first couple of characters of a contact name, and the list of names that fit comes up.  Sorry, you can't exclude names from that list, the only way to do that would be to delete the contact entirely.  If you have a contact that you rarely text or phone, perhaps they don't need to be in your contact list anyway,  Create a notepad note with such entries, so that you have the contact information should you ever need it.

[noiwont]

Sorry, but I get one every time I send a text, without typing in anything. It faithfully suggests the 3 or 4 people I most recently tected - perhaps we have different phones.
But strangely it adds one particular contact I almost never text or phone. And deleting that contact doesn't stop it from reappearing again and again.

[realaud]

We probably use different messaging apps. I have only ever used Google Messages through the years and many phones of various brands.  I only used Samsung messages long enough to determine that I hated it, and promptly went back to Google.  When I want to start a new chat in Google Messages, all it brings up is my contacts list, where I can either scroll to the contact I want, or start typing the name, as I type characters the list weans down to the names fitting the entered text, where I can choose from the short list who I want to send the text to.

Mostly, though, I initiate a text directly from my contacts list or my "people" edge panel, where I keep my favorites/most frequently contacted.  I rarely initiate a chat from within the messaging app itself.

So, if the "suggested recipient" is annoying to you and simply won't disappear, you can initiate your chat directly from your contacts, or you can clear the data from your messaging app.  This will reset the app but not affect any chats in progress.  You will have to redo all your settings (including notifications and RCS), but likely the ghost of your suggested recipient will be vanquished.

[TaperingThought]

Maybe a bad idea, but have you thought about clearing the cashe? Even that and data starting fresh

[realaud]

Clearing the data would be the way to go - the recipient is a ghost and that is a remnant from updates over updates.  Clearing the data will refresh the app.

[TaperingThought]

That's what I think too I don't see how it could, if you cleared the data

[noiwont]

I cleared the cache - no change.

[realaud]

But, did you clear the data?  Clearing the data will refresh the app and remove old settings and phantom contacts.  As I said before, you will have to re-do your settings afterwards, but you will have a clean app.

[noiwont]

No, not worth the trouble, since this is a recurring problem. Since I posted, I've discovered that this is a known bug in One UI 5.1 that I'm just going to have to live with until it's fixed