[John Clark]

So, you've found a copy of OS 4.5 either on the black market or via some of the few carriers that have released it. You have everything working fine but BlackBerry Messenger keeps throwing strange errors at you.

This is caused by your contacts having smileys in their contact name.

If you have someone in your BBM list and their name looks like John Clark or Stinsonddog then you need to ask your buddies to please remove smileys from their names.

It seems that smileys in the contact names will throw strange exception and layout errors in BBMessenger. This has been the case since the first of the 4.3.1 betas from last fall. I don't have any devices with OS 4.3.0.x but I think the problem exists there too. The problem didn't exist on 4.2.2 and lower, at least not for me.

Even you change a contacts name on your end, it will still throw the errors. Your buddy/contact MUST change it on their end to remove any smileys or special characters.

So, when setting up YOUR please be kind to your buddies on BBMessenger and DON'T add smileys to your name.

Enjoy 4.5! It seems as though it's finally just about here.

[ezrunner]

this is awesome stuff JC thanks

[Kevin Michaluk]

Wirelessly posted

Good to know! Thanks JC.

[TeritaM]

so I have to remove my heart if someone I know is using 4.5?
*le sigh*

[tgeekb]

Didn't know that though I don't have a smiley in my name. Using a special character though with no problems. Great information as usual.

[dhollins]

Good info again. John Clark is like E.F. Hutton. Thanks

[John Clark]

Originally Posted by tgeekb

Didn't know that though I don't have a smiley in my name. Using a special character though with no problems. Great information as usual.

The problem is not for you....it's for whoever is on the other end of you. I can put a smiley in my contact name with no ill-effects to me. However, it will cause problems on my friends berrys.

[ricpac]

Thank you JC... always ahead of the game!

[Horizon Wireless]

This is so true! Had so many issues with smileys. I can 100% vouch for this. Months of torment. JC told me, made everyone in the list delete the smileys, voila, problem solved for a couple of weeks. Then today, i had a customer add me to messenger, they had a smiley, i started getting uncaught exception 13, and other anomalies. I say this becomes a sticky!

[NCBuckeye]

I havent had any problems with that. The smiley face when it shows their name in the contact list?

[John Clark]

No, each contact has a smiley to the left of the name. That's part of the application and it changes color and adds a clock, etc. depending on your contacts status. I'm talking about when you setup your BBMessenger and it asks you to type your name as you'd like others to see it. You can add smileys but it screws up others BBMessenger.

[Dawg]

interesting indeed. Well we know people with smileys are usually sick anyway lol

[jimpilot]

Good info, thanks

[jeffmik]

Thanks for the headsup, although I can confirm that this was never a problem with my 8330 running 4.3.

[ladillex]

Does . $ or - also gives issues?

[ladillex]

Will deleting those smiley buddies also fix the issue???

[Mark PPG]

4.6 seems to NOT allow the use of a ":" in your info. It will allow the use of any symbol that doesn't have a : in it. Not sure if it's related to the errors John is talking about

[John Clark]

Interesting. There are a lot of logos going around in BBM names now. However, copying and pasting a logo in the name doesn't seem to cause these errors.