How to hide User Id's in Privatemsg Currently with the Privatemsg (v7.x-1.3) module it shows the user ids when sending a new message and I'd like it to show the user names instead. Firstly is there any problem with doing this?

Secondly the 'Send this user a private message' link is formatted as:

 /messages/new/3?destination=user/3


and if I change it to:

 /messages/new/user_name


the 'To' field on the write new message page does not contain the username. Is there a setting or module that would allow this.
I don't think there's an easy way to replace the user IDs with usernames, but you can easily add the usernames using the Realname integration (you have to set up the Realname module as well though).

My Privatemsg send page looks like this:



I did this by enabling Realname and following the instructions here.  You will need the dev version as well; the 1.3 release has broken Realname AJAX.