Q: Merge apple id's, me.com and itunes account?

andrew, you almost have it.  My main Apple ID (emails, calendar, everything but purchases) is myname(first and last)@mac.com.  I have used it for years. For that reason, I might have called it my "primary" ID. But I meant it's my non-purchases ID.

My other apple ID (for iTunes purchases, also used for years) was an earthlink email.  And when you have an apple ID that is anything that DOESN'T end in mac.com or me.com there is a box to change the username email.  Once you change it to ANYTHING that ends in mac.com or me.com, that option goes away.  Forever!

And in mycase, I changed it to my mac.com email WITH THE SMALL EXCEPTION of having my middle initial in there.  By accident.   If I recall, it did need to verify the "primary contact email, but it sent me an email to earthlink to do this.  I later changed the "primary contact email" for that apple ID to my mac.com address, but anticipating upgrading to IOS5, I have now put a gmail address in there, so that mac.com address will be free for my iCloud account for everything except purchases.  So, yeah, I'm going to get purchase receipts sent to gmail.  Which is a hassle.

But the NAME of the account is this non-existent email ending in mac.com that can never be a working email.

Now, I have tried typing in my mobile me aliases as the primary contact email for that iTunes/purchase ID.  It doesn't accept them. Says they are already associated with another ID (and they are - my mac.com/me.com email.) It's as if it KNOWS that they are aliases, and thus the "same" email as another apple ID.

PERHAPS, had I at least changed that earthlink username to myname (first, middle initial and last) at ME.COM (rather than mac.com, since mac.com addresses don't work unless they were grandfathered in before mobile me), I would have been able to make that an alias on my main email address.  But I don't think it would have worked for the same reason in the above paragraph.

Does that make sense?

boysmom:

you're in pretty good shape actually. mostly because if you use your firstlast@mac.com for email and syncing, you *should* be able to migrate that to iCloud (grandfathered) and not have to use @me (i gave up because i got too many buggy errrors logging in).

if you have problems using @mac switch like me to using @me for *all* forms of authentication, never use .mac.

as you are painfully aware now, you can not CHANGE your appleid once it's been changed to @me or @mac but there may be ONE thing you didn't try.

I have an iCloud account i just made for testig purposes bogus@mydomain.com (litreally called bogus). but it was only set up for syncing and such, it has no email address which directly matches your situation; namemiddle@mac.com is a valid apple id but no email address.

if you log in to that username with an iOS5 device in the iCloud settings it will notice there is no email and ASK IF YOU WANT ONE.

now it may STOOPIDLY not do so, but that's exactly what happens for me.

if it in-fact works, you may at least be able to have your ID match a valid email, not sure if that really helps you if you already use the gmail account attached to firstmiddle@mac.com appleid.

you cannot assign another @me address to an apple id because all @me are by definition and appleid. you MAY be able as described above to create an email that is valid and matches your purchase appleid.

my appleid for purchases is not a valid email *either* and that can be beneficial though can be confusing.

I just tried to change my apple id to bogus@me.com and got the alert that it's not allowed.

when you login to appleid.apple.com does it say :

apple id and primary email address: firstmiddle@mac.com ? if so, then i believe you already *have* two email addresses and you can in-fact login at me.com/mail for example using the firstmiddle@mac.com credendials.

you of course cannot change that ID but at least you can maybe get all your appleid emails associated with @me accounts and have some cleanliness.

if your primary email you use is gmail then add that as a secondary email into your iCloud email so find-my-friends works. you can email me directly if you feel like it. I've been using mac.com since day one and mobileme and now iCloud also 'day one' so been through every transition's teething pains.

my mobile me email matches my username HERE.

-awr

Andrew, you said "you cannot assign another @me address to an apple id because all @me are by definition and appleid. you MAY be able as described above to create an email that is valid and matches your purchase appleid." 

That was not true several months ago.  Then I easily assigned my firstlast@me/mac.com email as the CONTACT email to the formerly earthlink, now firstmiddlelast@mac.com ID (the non-changeable one that is not a working address).  It verified and it was sending me purchase receipts.  But if I had LEFT it there, once I moved to IOS5 and iCloud, I was sure it would give me problems when I tried to migrate my main every day personal email from me.com to iCloud (as I've read others have had in the exact same situation), so I deleted it and put the gmail contact email there.  firstmiddlelast@mac.com will be my iTunes account email once I get on ios5.  I am assuming this is not an issue from what I've read.  I'll just need to set up my phone to get gmails as well as me.mails.  CORRECT?

As to your other question, now when I log into firstmiddlelast@mac.om, that is the ID's name, BUT the primary contact email is a gmail address.  That freed ME up to use firstlast@mac.com as the primary contact email for the Apple ID of the same name.  THIS WILL be my iCloud primary ID (non purchases) And it I have recently verified it there (before that ID didn't have a verified email and it never seemed to bother anyone because I wasn't buying anything with it). I assume I had to do this to get firstlast@mac.com to be my non-purchase ID on iCloud.

Again, I haven't migrated yet.

Sorry, wanted to add that I can never make an email that matches my purchase ID because it ends in mac.com.  I suppose I could try creating firstmiddlelast@ME.com, but I believe it will tell me it's already in use.

I think I've considered everything else.

I just thought of something. If only in my attempts to fix this, months ago, I hadn't made an alias of firstmiddlelast@me.com in my family pack mobile me account.  It's an alias to firstlast@me.com

Now you can no longer delete aliases in mobile me!

You can delete them once you move to iCloud, but that won't help me, because then if I recreate it, it will become an apple ID automatically and won't be alllowed as the primary contact email for firstmiddlelast@mac.com, which it would match perfectly.

If only I had deleted it while I still could have, I could've used it as my fifth family email address, and made it the CONTACT email for firstmiddlelast@MAC.com

Darn.

aah it's making sense now... firstmiddlelast *is* a me.com/mac.com address because of the alias factor. also you must have verified the address via that channel.

bogus about the alias non delete, because if you could convert to a family 'member' vs alias that would get what you want including that address can go to the cloud.

you can't make an @me same as a different @mac they are the same.

unfortunately alias transfer as aliases not sub-accounts, so as you realized, can't convert it to a real account afterwards.

Ok, so the tagging solution is your best bet and probably better than having a separate email anyhow.

on your firstmiddlelast@mac.com apple id, you can change your primary email to:

firstlast+itunes@mac.com

it will send verification to firstlast@mac.com so you can lock it in; that at least eliminates having another email (gmail) involved it also has the bonus of sending your purchase receipts to your main email.

think of like in my case:

my iTunes applid is 'firstmiddle'

my primary email with that ID is FM+itunes@name.biz

my iCloud appleid is firstmiddle@me.com

my REAL email is FM@name.biz and that is also my primary email; i ERASED my primary email of firstmiddle@me.com i never use that anyhow. I did that so my find-my-friends would work with my non-me email.

so in your case:

FirstMLast@mac.com apple id would get a primary email of FirstLast+iTunes@mac.com

you'd continue to use FirstLast@mac.com for everything besides purchases

for purchases you'd use FirstMLast@mac.com but purchase receipts will go to FirstLast@mac.com

i don't think you'll get a better solution than that. it's actually good to have purchases split from regular iCloud biz anyhow especially since you can have separate passwords; let the boys have access to iCloud services w/ot cart blanc buying iTunes for example.

ps you are 'already screwed' not being able to directly re-assign your apple id to your email, also i tried to create a new apple id with a previous alias and that fails so you're out-of-luck with that line of reasoning as well.

even IF you could delete the alias and re-create a sub-account, it won't let you add an email that has ever been an apple id, so i think STOOPIDLY it wouldn't even let you assign that email address else you could do it right now. I think more than likely you'd get stuck at he creation point because you would not be allowed to make an email address which already exists as an apple ID.

my solution will let you combine both into one from a functional standpoint while keeping the actual purchase login different. (you only have to set that ONCE per iDevice anyhow, and if you've already been using it then just keep usin' it).

The ONLY other reasonable option: bail on the FirstMLast@ and make your purchases with FirstLast@ ; you will have 'old purchases' and 'new purchases' so when doing app updates you'll have to put in passwords twice depending if old or new are updated. i recommend against it. That said:

if your purchases are MOSTLY with @earthlink and only a few are with the mutant FirstMLast@mac, than it would be a decent solution to bail on that one and either create a NEW appleid for purchase (say for example: FirstLast+itunes@mac.com) that would get you a CLEAN solution as well.

your purchases will all be tagged with the primary email address at the time of purchases. you can QUICKLY determine exactly which songs/movies/videos were bought under which email using ths amazing script i found online: http://dougscripts.com/449

(it originally only searched by 'real name' which typically stays the same; i wrote in a suggestion to the original creator and he added in the OPTION of either name or account).

run that applescript set to 'account' on all your 'purchased' or 'protected' tracks and you'll quickly get a set of playlists containing all the songs bought by EACH email account.

in my case I had ELEVEN  but 3 of the accountd had less than 3 songs so i converted all the 'small count' ones to MP3 by burning to CD and re-importing, now i'm down from 11 to 4 accounts.

determine based on which has the fewest which route to take.

the accountname will stay the same (FirstMLast@mac.com) in any event so that one is here to stay, meaning i'm back to recommending that you for convienence sake use whichever email you use the most and set that as your primary email in the FirstMLast@mac.com appleid; either youremail+itunes@gmail.com or FirstLast+itunes@mac.com from that point on at least your receipts will go to the same place. you'll still need to 'add the M' to login for purchases but you do NOT have to add in the +itunes that's not the login, that's just for delivery.

IF on the otherhand, you have VERY FEW purchases with FirstMLast and most are earthlink which you can not switch back to anyhow. (although it would be worth a SHOT); hmm be right back.

the thought was this: re-create a NEW apple ID with your EARTHLINK or GMAIL address from scratch.

if you look at your purchase history (using the script above) you'll probably have most purchases there. I think you said that email is bunk now anyhow, so you will have SPLIT purchases no matter what you do.

if you have 'more than a few' with the mutant id, than it's best to go with plan-a; FirstMLast+itunes@mac.com as primary email. If however you'd like to break free from the goof and have an appleid that maches the email, you could as you suggested, create a brand new 'firstmiddlelast@me.com' or just use your gmail address (that's guaranteed to be available); youremail@gmail.com as a brand-new appleid.

let the old one die; if you are a purest and only have a few purchases with FirstMLast you could re-purchase or delete 'em and still at least only have TWO iTunes accounts in your library.

so, i'm interested to see what you'd decide to do; it's pretty harmless to try out the tagged email solution since you already are past the point of no return; you can re-change the primary email as often as you'd like (just beware when using @me addresses; it will preculde you from using that as an apple id standalone in the future).

-awr

Wow.  I am so sorry to have been so confusing. I'm not quite sure you get it.

Firstmiddlelast@mac.com was NAME CHANGE only that I made when it was still possible, to an Apple ID that I used for iTunes only (it used to be firstlast@earthlink..net, which I wanted to get rid of).  It was a freak accident.  I thought I was typing firstlast@mac.com. It likely let allowed the mistake  Firstmiddlelast@mac.com was a non-existent address.  They don't initiate new mac.com addresses anymore, haven't since mobile me was launched. But it was only the ID NAME that I changed at that time.  I did this in iTunes.  It likely verified to the CONTACT ADDRESS which was earthlink. This may not be how it works now, but it is what happened then, many months ago.

I then changed the CONTACT ADDRESS for the ID called firstmiddlelast@mac.com to my firstlast@mac.com, which it LET me do THEN because at the time, that ID was a mobile me ID that I only used for mail/calendar, etc. and I had never verified any address it's Apple ID sign-in. 

Then recently, I realized i would need firstlast@mac.com free and clear to verify it as my primary iCloud email address (correct?). So I deleted it as the CONTACT to firstmiddlelast@mac.com and changed that contact to a gmail address.  But the NAME of the ID is a non-usable, non-existent, never can reach anyone email address called firstmiddlelast@mac.com

Yes, I LATER made an alias to firstlast@mac/me.com called firstmiddlelast@me.com.  But I did that after the problem was created, trying to solve it.  And it has proved useless.

As for my purchases, they are ALL with that formerly earthlink, now firstmiddlelast@mac.com ID that sends emails to gmail.  But I don't have that many.  Not really an issue.  Except 3 family members have also used it, including two sons who are grown up and growing up and have bought thousands of songs.  I would like to separate them from EACH OTHER and have them each eventually use their own credit card.  One son has already been doing this with another ID.

So it's two issues really.

In a perfect world, we'd be able to dissovle firstmiddlelast@mac.com, sending its songs to TWO OTHER accounts for which my sons can use their own credit cards as they mature.  That way my kids can sync all their music with one ID each.  And I can just use my firstlast@mac.com email.  That would make me so happy.

Do you know if my sons were to burn their firstmiddlelast@mac.com purchases (formerly earthlink), would the song titles and artists be erased?  The program you posted would help us separate them.

JUST MADE A FEW CORRECTIONS.  andrew, re-read if you can.

Andrew, you said:

"on yourfirstmiddlelast@mac.com apple id, you can change your primary email to:

firstlast+itunes@mac.com

it will send verification to firstlast@mac.com so you can lock it in; that at least eliminates having another email (gmail) involved it also has the bonus of sending your purchase receipts to your main email."

That would be great, but... How is this possible?  How can it send verification to another Apple ID - the same one I am using for everything else?  I thought each ID needs its own verified email.  Otherwise it tells you it's already verified to another ID.

ETA:  Already tried changing back to earthlink.  That ID does not exist anymore.  Even called Apple, can't be done.  Recreated it; it's empty, purchase history gone.

ETA:  Maybe I don't understand email tags?  they sound like aliases. 

Again, I think I'm just going to use firstlast@me.com from now on.  It will cost me about $200 in repurchasing, so I'm lucky. Just wish I could free my sons from firstmlast@mac.com forever.

no i think what you re-stated is what i understand. (maybe with a *little* confusion because not being sure if you are saying middle meanind full middle name or just the middle initial 'M'.

me.com and mac.com are synonymous from email perspective; though you may have annyingly discovered a loophole into a black hole: making an @me alias to a nonexitant @mac address.

if you have an applid that is: FirstMLast@mac.com but the email tied to that is @gmail, you may be able to migrate that to iCloud and get a functional email address out of that, probably your best bet, however if you have a matching FirstMLast@me.com alias, it will almost certainly interfere.

so back when you could change an ID you changed firstlast@el to FirstMLast@mac.com but at the time, it wasn't considered linked to an email, and verified you wanted to make that chage via earthlink.

the alias is really the roadblock to what you want unfortunately.

a remote possibility of having your iTunes ID match an email address:

1) migrate firstlast@mac.com to the cloud

2) delete the alias FirstMLast@me.com from that iCloud account

3) assign firstMLast@mac.com to your iTunesID as a primary email.

odd are low that would work; i had zero percent luck re-cycling *any* email attached even as a secondary email to any other appleid ever.

So, since especially you can CHANGE the primary email at any time on your iTunes account, the best route is t use the tagged email to merge the functionality:

if you set your pirmary email at your appleid FirstMLast@mac.com to FirstLast+itunes@mac.com you will have ONE email for ALL services (FirstLast@mac.com) you can then migrate firstlast@mac.com to iCloud and delete the useless alias.

at that point, you *might* be able to convert your iTunes ID to iCloud. this would be the steps required:

1) migrate FirstLast@mac.com to iCloud (already done)

2) delete FirstMLast@mac/me.com alias from that account (already done)

3) login to iCloud on an iDevice to your FirstMLast@mac.com (iTunes) appleid

4) it will notice there is no email attached to that account and ask 'would you like to add one)

5) answer **** yes.

it's a long-shot but a possibility.

i would set up as the primary email on iTunes account FirstLast+itunes@mac.com just to make sure there is no tie to the gmail account first.

Like i said, from a functional standpoint, it's better to have have your iTunes receipts going to the main email address anyhow and using the tagged email (+iTunes) will do that.

ps. if you are holding off on iCloud for backwards compatibility, you can in-fact use iCloud sync of calendars and contacts on iOS 4 and leopard, just FYI.

-awr

Yes, you understand!  And yes, I confusingly said "middle" or "M" a few times and "middle initial" a few other times.  It's just the middle initial, which happens to be an M, that's in that ID.  Sorry about that. 

But this + itunes tagging thing you're talking about still seems confusing to me, or there's something I don't know about adding the plus and itunes to an email address.  Wouldn't that be creating a new email address?  How would emails addressed that way somehow end up in my firstlast@me.com mailbox?  I'm missing something!

And yes, I also thought about migrating, deleting the alias, and seeing if I can recreate it as a new email.  But it too would go to a new mailbox because it would be a new email. It would just be a me email instead of a gmail one.

Also not sure what you mean by "migrate your iTunes ID to iCloud" by making it has no email so it asks for one.  Are you saying it might accept firstlast@me.com, even though it's verified to that ID? My son number two is already using the firstMlast@mac.com his iphone 4S as his itunes ID (while using his me.com address for everything else), no problem, and I get the receipts at gmail. So I'm not sure what you mean by that.  Sorry for being so dense!

And again, I may just give the old iTunes account ID (the one with the M) to one of my sons, so he can eventually change the payment method to his own card and pay for his own stuff.  And he will use that ID for purchases and his me.com for everything else.  The other son would have to burn a couple thousand songs to remove the DRM (and I would just do everything with firstlast@me) after a few repurchases.

Do you happen to know if there's a way to keep the song info when doing this?  Nobody seems to be able to tell me.

Andrew, OMG.  This +itunes thing works.  I had no idea what you were talking about.  Just sent myself a test email. It right to my non + itunes box. I never knew this was something one could do. Now to see if the old ID will verify it.  BTW, tried to email you.  Not sure you got it.

the + tagging of an email is a way to effectively have an alias without formally making one. you can test it yourself. send yourself an email to FirstLast+itunes@mac.com; you will see it comes right to your main mailbox.

it's a very powerful workaround to this mess apple created by not allowing merging ids.

i've discovered that when i use an apple ID to connect to iCloud when that ID does not have email, the iPhone asks me if i'd like to create a free email address to go along with it.

as you noticed, that would still net you two diferent emails anyhow which you really don't want, so i'm quite sure the best solution for you will be email tagging.

taging an email is basically used so you can FILTER email based on that tag; for example you don't have to trust that apple will put a useful subject like 'itunes' in the subject anymore; if an email comes in 'to' the address name+itunes@mac.com it is 100% for certain related to iTunes.

I use tagging like this: FM+news@name.com (my email is FM@name.com) the +news gets sorted right into a 'news' mailbox and out of the inbox. in your case (and in MY case as well); i updated my own primary email address to be FM+itunes@name.com for my iTunes purchases because i wanted my REAL email to be associated with my iCloud username. i discovered that i could actually assign that email as my primary email on my iCloud account (which is a me.com address); you couldn't do that because you are already using that as a primary email on your m.me address.

to be clear on the tagging; when email is delievered, whatever is to the right of the + is ignored until it gets to your inbox. FM+itunes@name.com is the SAME as FM@name.com from a delivery perspective.

it's a loophole that if somebody figures out how to cause trouble with, will be closed quickly so i'd do it right now.

re: migrate itunes to the cloud; no i'm saying you could migrate your FirstMLast@mac.com to the cloud if you wanted to, but probably makes less sense than using the tagging. you just have a 'non email' appleid; it just coincidentally *looks like* one.

there is a new paradigm shift in apple id's and you do NOT want to do as you described above. with iCloud you want EVERYBODY to have their own iCloud id and it should match THEM.

you can have up to FIVE authorized machines per user ID and up to FIVE accounts synced to EACH iDevice, so you can just keep the older DRM songs 'as is' and share in the family, you just want to limit NEW accounts as you will hit that limit.

i had to move about 300 songs from obsolete user ids to clean up my iTunes mess (i have about 10,000 songs but only about 600 are purchased songs).. i used a 'virtual CD' to 'burn' so i didn't have to waste actual DVD material. you can get a 15 day demo of the software; google vircual-cd-r it's $40 to buy it. you can fit about 75minutes per session.

most of the important song info tranferred over perfectly fine with these caveats:

1) if you use an actual CD just make sure the 'save text info' is checked, and iTunes makes an extra file that it reads back in to replicate the mp3 tags or

2) if using the virtual Cd method, the option won't be there, but if you do not unmount the virtual CD from the desktop, iTunes will magically 'just know'. i didn't lose any album art etc ; it 'just worked'; i'm not 100% positive about play counts and of course the 'date added' and 'date modified' will become 'today'.

make SURE you set your import to either 256 AAC or at least 160-192 mp3 so you won't lose quality!

so, if you don't have a lot of DRM with FirstMLast@ i would recommend to split up the purchases as such:

set all iDevices that you'd like to share apps/songs/movies to the SAME iTunes id and the logical choice is FirstLast@mac.com, set up DIFFERENT apple ids for iCloud for any other than YOUR iDevices.

you do not need to keep the goofus id active at all; all your old purchases are tied to the earthlink name anyhow. Im not aware of any benefit of an old appleid. you dont' have to 'delete' it just let it be 'orphaned'.

if you want to 'break away' from sharing all music; e.g. with different tastes, you may have zero interest in sharing songs, then it makes the most sense for each user to have their own iTunes id as well; you can still combine the songs you'd like if syncing to the SAME computer, as long as the total ID count is less than SIX. (that includes the earthlink ID and FirstMLast id etc), that's why i said it's probably a good thing to eliminate the FirstMLast account from your iTunes using the script above to find them and the 'via burning CD' method to convert to 192mp3 or 256 aac. (i prefer mp3 'cause you can burn 100+ songs to ONE CD that will play on modern equipment).

You can use as you figured out a SHARED iTunes store ID on several devices while using a DIFFERENT iCloud ID and that's what you need to do for iOS5 to work properly.

IF, however the iCloud ID is NOT the primary email address like in my case, you want to ADD that as your primary email to that cloud id.

example: my iCloud id: firstmiddle@me.com; i just erased that as my primary email and made it FM@name.biz so that find-my-friend works propary and any apply announcements to iCloud will go to an emailbox i actually read.

-awr

andrewwyn wrote:

[using +tags on email] is a very powerful workaround to this mess apple created by not allowing merging ids.

Just to be clear: this is a powerful workaround to ONE aspect of the mess created by divergent IDs -- and I'm pleased to hear that some people's difficulties are resolved. Still, it doesn't help with the fact that many of us have DRM and app purchases spread across distinct AppleIDs.

That's very true. It's just a pressure relief valve for certain problems.

I had ELEVEN apple IDS in my iTunes library. Most based on having many emails over the years. I used the apple script mentioned above to discover exactly what IDs were in my library.. Five of the eleven had fewer than 3 songs!

I deleted songs that weren't even mine ( I upgraded a friends iPhone once and the process copied his files onto my computer: tip if you ever do that MAKE A NEW USER first so you can delete afterwards: it's very difficult to remove the intermingling especially apps which you can't group or sort).

The MAIN help of the + tagging is if your real email is a me.com addresss yet your iTunes ID is either a different me address OR your real email had ever been associated with an apple ID OR like me, your apple ID is non-email and youd like to KEEP IT that way.

-awr

How can Apple be so discrete about this issue? This is a major issue, it concerns a lot of us and honestly, as a .Mac/MobileMe paying customer for years I expected a better preparation of that iCloud merge...