How is Verizon Messages using my Contacts?

[xQQQQme]

I'm willing to give this app a try as my go-to text app but initiating a text is really awkward because -- at least for me -- when I type in a name, the info that it pulls from Contacts is *only* email addresses...never a phone number. Any phone number.  Just email addresses.

When someone else sends me a text msg, the app works fine....but, oddly, the senders (so far) have been ID'd only by their phone number, in spite of the fact that they're all in my Contacts and should appear as a name, right?

My Ellipsis 8 was set up by a rep at the Verizon Store...so what I'm using is what was set up there.  I would have assumed that this tablet would be pulling from the same Contacts data that my phone does.  But something's missing.  How do I get Verizon Messages to pull up phone numbers and not email addresses?

[karthikb_vzw · Accepted solution]

Verizon Messages will use the contacts it can locate on Gmail or the ones that have been backed up by the Verizon Cloud app on your Smartphone (If you have an older device, the app may be called Backup Assistant). If you have contacts stored locally on your Smartphone that are not backed up to the Verizon Cloud, then the Verizon Messages app on the Tablet has no way to access those contacts.