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

@Matthew Palm. Brilliiant - I'd been looking for a way to eliminate my old email address from my AppleID and it looks like the answer was under my nose all along, Just log in with my new iCloud email address!! I've tried it on the web version of iCloud and also on Appleid.com. And...I also used my iCloud email adddress to log onto these forums to make this reply. It's simple, if you've converted to iCloud, use this as your 'new' apple id and just forget all about your old email address. I shall now go downstairs to my mac and log out of icloud and itunes (with an old @btinternet.com address) and log back in using my iCloud email address as my Appleid username and my existing Appleid password. Good find, thanks for sharing.

Jon

Hi Jon:

Glad that was helpful.

Keep in mind, though, that -- at least for me -- Apple still sends emails to my @sbcglobal.net email. For example, when Apple Discussions just emailed me about your comment, it was sent to my @sbcglobal.net email. I do not see any way to change this. That is one downside of "pretending" all my logins are @me.com.

(However, as I indicated above, you *might* be able to change this for the iTunes Store email address, by accessing your profile/account directly within iTunes, then selecting "Edit" and changing your email there. But I haven't tried that yet.)

Please let us know how it goes when you log out of iCloud on your iMac and log back in wiuth @me.com. (I know that it works with iTunes).

I'm also curious to know if logging out of iCloud on the iPhone/iPad, and then logginh back in with @me.com will also work.

Thanks, and good luck.

Logged out of iCloud on osx (by logging out) and ios (by deleting accounts) and logged back in using icloud email address on all (mac 1st, then ipad, then iphone). Worked fine, all re-sync'd automatically and no data has been lost. However, like osx iTunes, my IOS devices say they are logged into my old Appleid when you look at settings>iCloud (even though I def used my iCloud email address to log in with). But in system preferences, my mac icloud says it's logged into my @me address. Everything works - go figure. You're right about forum replies and iTunes receipts - I can't see a way round this at the moment but it's no bother having two email accounts and keeping the old one alive - what I didn't like was having an old and irrelevant ISP as part of my Appleid.

Thanks for the update, Jon.

Since it looks like you are logged back in to iCloud under the old Apple ID, despite the fact that you logged in under the @me.com email, it's probably an unnecessary step. (Trial and error here!)

What's interesting is that OS X shows you are logged into iCloud under the @me.com email, so maybe it is worth doing.

One follow up question -- do you use iCal and Contacts with iCloud? If so, when you signed out of iCloud on your iMac, did you "Delete Contacts" from the Mac, and then re-download them? And were there any duplicates you could notice, under Contacts or iCal?

Thanks!

Yes I use them both heavily and have been stung like this with mobileme and lost everything. The trick is to keep everything you can on your mac/device when asked, and then merge them afterwards when you log back in (which actually works now - mobileme used to go into a crazy replication frenzy sometimes). Note that when you log out of your mac icloud you get one option (keep) and two warnings. Don't worry - just go with it, it all comes back from the cloud. My running order was logout 1.mac 2.ipad 3.iphone and then login same order.

Thanks, Jon.

Just to be clear: when you sign out of iCloud on the iMac, and it asks do you want to Keep or Delete Contacts, did you Keep or did you Delete?

I am worried that if I click Keep I will get duplicates when I log back into iCloud.

What did you do?

Also, did you try changing your iTunes email from within the iTunes store?

Thanks again, Jon! Feels like we're getting close to finding a workable solution.

When logging out, keep everything you can on every device (including the mac) you can. When logging back in, accept every offer of 'merge'. I've got no duplicates on either my mac or ios devices and I've just had a quick check by adding dummy appointments and contacts and everything is still flowing accross to the other devices.

I tried to change my itunes receipt email to my new icloud email on the day I upgraded to Lion (about 14 days ago - steep learning curve or what?) but it all went Very Badly Wrong and I've decided that I need to do a lot more research before I tinker with it again (actaully I'm not sure that it can be changed).

Have you noticed that when you delete your old username from the ios icloud username box, there is a light grey 'example at me dot com' there. It just makes me think that an @me address is supposed to go in there. I wonder if any of my itunes homesharing and sleep problems might be related to this - I'm off to test.

Jon

Terrific. I will follow your advice regarding the "merge" options.

I still might try changing my iTunes receipt email, though I hope things don't also go Very Badly Wrong for me!

I will report back as soon as I've started the whole process.

Thanks, Jon!

OK, so I went ahead and signed out of iCloud on my Mac, then signed back in with @me.com. All the data was preserved.

And like you, my iCloud account appeared as "Apple ID: myname@me.com."

And then I did the same on my iPad, and all data was preserved, but there it still showed Apple ID as "myname@sbcglobal.net."

And then I chickened out. Noticing that my Mac iCloud said "Apple ID: myname@me.com" made me think, Well, maybe there's a chance that those IDs will be separated out in some way down the road.

So, I logged back out, deleted all data from my iMac, then logged back in with my original Apple ID @sbcglobal.net. And then I did the same on my iPad.

My decision is to leave all settings the same, but to know that I *can* sign in using either @sbcglobal.net or @me.com. I guess that's good enough for me.

And I also decided not to mess with changing my iTuines notification email, after your sort of dire warning!

Futzing with data always makes me nervous, and so far at least, everything works fine as it's set up. I guess I just have to live with that legacy @sbcglobal.net name for my Apple ID.

Thanks again for all the back and forth, Jon. Hopefully others will see this exchange and benefit from it.

Be well,

Matt

I just wonder if this is a backdoor way that Apple will shut down when they discover us using it. It's obvious they don't want people merging accounts by their silence on this. I really am thinking the main reason they won't change it is because of the huge loss of revenue it would bring. No more would people have to rebuy their purchases for new devices. What other possible reason is there? It is so unlike Apple to wait so long to fix a usability feature that is so relatively simple to change.

Dckpop, you might be right about them closing down this backdoor, but I doubt it. It doesn't matter to Apple.

There is no reason you (or anyone) should have to re-purchase any apps or music whatsoever. All you have to do is sign in to iTunes with your Apple ID and download previous purchases. If you made purchases using *another* Apple ID, then sign out and sign back in on that ID and download *those* purchases. It's not in Apple's interest to make people pay twice for something. They'd soon have millions of unhappy people.

Today at the Apple Store I heard the first compelling argument for why Apple prevents people from merging Apple IDs: there is no easy way for Apple to verify that you are the owner of both accounts. Think of all the credit card info, addresses, etc., that would have to be verified to guard against someone "appropriating" someone else's account. There is just no easy way to do that.

Now, given the brain trust at Apple, I'm sure they could figure it out, but my guess is that it is low on their list.

And the fact is, folks like us, with our problems, are likely a small minority of all users.

Matthew Palm wrote:

Today at the Apple Store I heard the first compelling argument for why Apple prevents people from merging Apple IDs: there is no easy way for Apple to verify that you are the owner of both accounts. Think of all the credit card info, addresses, etc., that would have to be verified to guard against someone "appropriating" someone else's account. There is just no easy way to do that.

They do have an easy way, they can ask you to enter the user name and password for each account. That's all you need to otherwise "appropriate" someone else's account, or am I missing something?

Hmm, OK, I guess it would be harder to return a "stolen" account to someone after it was merged into another account. So maybe they did have a point. Still, I don't see this as an unsurmountable problem.

OK, I think there is some confusion going on in this thread recently.

If you sign up to iCloud using an existing Apple ID, and get a new @me.com address, then those are not two different Apple IDs. They are the same Apple ID. They are just different aliases for the same Apple ID. You don't need to be worried about them being separated at any point. The email address isn't the actual ID, it is just an alias, and you can add several different email address to your ID, and sign in using any of them.

This also isn't really a backdoor or workaround to anything, it's just how Apple designed the system to try and prevent quite the same fudge-up as they had with Mobile Me (where you were given an @me.com address which was a seperate Apple ID).

It's also not a complete solution for dumping you old email address, because, as I discovered earlier in the thread, you (currently) cannot change your @me.com address to be the primary email address for your account, it just remains as a secondary email address, and if you try to change it to be your primary address you're told you can't use it, as it is already assigned to an Apple ID (I believe this is actually a bug though, and is a remnant left over from Mobile Me, where @me.com address were always separate Apple IDs, whereas in iCloud they can be aliases for existing Apple IDs).

I'm not surpised people are confused, though, even trying to explain it here I realise I'm probably just confusing people further.

Link to post about error/bug when trying to set @me.com address as primary email address for the Apple ID it is already linked to: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2298071?answerId=17406696022#17406696022

Luke Noel-Storr wrote:

Hmm, OK, I guess it would be harder to return a "stolen" account to someone after it was merged into another account. So maybe they did have a point. Still, I don't see this as an unsurmountable problem.

Yeah, that's how I interpreted it, too. And I completely agree: Apple has many smart people, and they could figure this out if they wanted to. I think they just don't want to right now, and maybe never will.