Display on iMessages has weird, almost empty appearance

[Danty66]

I use iMessages a lot and just in the past week the display has "lost" almost all of the normal data on the home screen I have taken for granted.
All that shows on the iMessages home window now is a vertical row of circular icons on the left side where photos of the sender can be displayed.
Most of the people I text with don't have photos so these windows are all blank with a silhouette of a face.
Some of the icons have the initials of the sender and other icons have a building image.
Plus, there is no name of the sender shown and the first line of the latest text is also missing.

I have to hover my mouse over the circular icon for each text to see the phone number of the sender.

This is bizarre!
I tried various ways to restore the display but nothing seems to work.

Any suggestions?

I am attaching a screenshot of what the iMessages display looks like now and a screenshot of a photo of iMessages from the Apple website to illustrate what it is supposed to look like on a Mac (an used to look like for me just about a week ago).

Danty

 

[Insidious]

Try dragging the side bar over to expand the names.

 

[Danty66]

I tried to drag the side bar.
Nothing happens.
I moved the mouse to various points up and down the side bar.
It won't budge the line.

 

[Danty66]

All fixed.
I called Apple Support and had to speak with two tech people (the first person in Australia and the second in the U.S.)
The 2nd man, Chris, tried a bunch of things the first man didn’t do (and some he did) with no improvement.
The drag bar on the left side of the Messages window just wouldn't function.

Finally he had me boot the computer in Safe mode.
I did and the computer moved at glacial speed in that mode with delays and jerks as it followed through the commands.

Chris then had me use the mouse to get the drag bar moving to the right that wouldn’t move in standard mode.
At first it didn’t look like it was doing anything but then, after about (10) seconds, the full Messages display popped into full view.
The drag bar was working again!
I rebooted in standard mode and, Voila, all was working properly.

Apple Support comes to the rescue . . again.

I asked Chris about using Safe mode to fix other apps . . . and he said it sometimes is very useful in getting apps to repair login type actions and displays.