Google Voice is a great service, but it has one flaw that a lot of people wished didn’t exist – you can’t send an initial text message out from a featurephone a.k.a. dumbphone as your GV number. (You can with a smartphone because you can use a GV app or go to m.google.com/voice in he phone’s browser.)

Or can you?

In fact, you can.

The way most people use Google Voice is that they have incoming calls and texts forwarded to their existing phone for whatever it may be (you could even use a plain house phone if you wanted).

For those with dumbphones, what happens is that GV will forward texts as it should, and on reply the recipient will see the message as coming from your GV number. The problem however is that if you want to send an initial message (as in a message beginning a text conversation), that uses your cell number instead of the GV number.

The way around this is easy, although admittedly it will require modifying contact information in your phone’s address book.

How GV works with text forwarding is that it will assign an alias phone number. When you reply to the text, you’re actually replying to the number alias GV assigned, and that’s how the recipient receives the text as coming from your GV and not your actual cell number.

The solution here is that when someone texts you via your GV number that’s forwarded to your existing dumbphone, save that alias number and use that to start text conversations with that individual from that point forward; that’s all there is to it.

Does this mean that those you want to start conversations with via your dumbphone must text you first so you can get that alias number to save in your dumbphone’s address book? Yes. Presently, that’s the only way to do it.

And no, you won’t find the alias numbers in the GV web interface. The person you want to save the alias number for must text you first so you can get that number.

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