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

Thank you for those thoughts,Yorick2a. I often wonder why that option isn't mentioned more often in threads like this. I'll give it a test drive....

Please don't do that. You will spend soooooo much time bruning CDs and re-importing them. Re-download all of the tracks from the account you want to do away with, then they will be DRM free in a higher quality format.

Side note: more than one Apple ID purchases can live inside of the same iTunes library. It won't mess anything up. The problem is not seeing those tracks in iCloud. If you want them in the cloud you would need to pay for iTunes Match and do the same thing.

Nick— If I re-import all of the music in "Account B," how do I then get them into "Account A?"

As a side-question, I thought there was an option to convert all of your music to a high-quality DRM-free format for a fee.

Sorry for what seems like simple stuff ... all this iTunes music format business is confusing.

Same problem here!

Please apple make it possible to merge two accounts!!

Thanks for that tip, aussieguyinnyc. It's the closest I've come to a workable solution.

Here's another thing I've discovered that might be helpful. In my case, I want to ditch an old sbcglobal.net email and make my me.com email my Apple ID, which we all know can't be done.

So, I followed your advice and changed my email contact info to the me.com address, which takes care of the correspondence issue.

But now I've discovered that I can ALSO sign in to all Apple platforms -- iTunes, App Store, Discussions, etc. -- using that me.com address. Of course, after I log in it shows my Apple ID as the sbcglobal.net email, but at least I can type in me.com and it still works.

Getting closer...

Does anyone know how to retrieve things under an old Apple ID when the email used for that account no longer exists?

I am trying to update an app that was bought under an old apple I'd, for which I forgot the password. I can't click 'forgot password' because an email will be sent to an email account that no longer exists. Any suggestions?

What a perfect example of why Apple should allow the merging of Apple ID's!!! Then you could log in under a different ID and all your purchases from any ID you might have had in the past would be there... other than that, which obviously isn't about to happen anytime soon (because Apple never read these forums because it would take a team of hundreds 24/7!), I think you are shafted mate!

There are recovery mechanisms for when old email doesn't exist. Starting with birthday and questions. You can have an apple ID that is not a valid email just like us "old school" users with "handle" type user id without an @.

Start at appleid.apple.com. If that won't work use genius bar or phone (though they might charge).

Once you get the pwd fixed you can change the user ID to a valid email as long as not currently @me or @mac

To effectively combine accounts use a "tag" such as this:

If current iTunes purchase ID is :

first.last@gmail.com

Use:

first.last+iTunes@gmail.com

as your replacement user ID for old email. This will get all your emails to the same mailbox.

You can have up to five user IDs active on an iDevice so just two is no big deal.

It's actually a really simple workaround for most people to effectively merge their user IDs.

I don't thInk that helps with iTunes match but for apps songs and videos it works like a charm.

You can use +tunes1 +tunes2 etc to combine more than one.

very interesting thx

I had to resort to the same fix because i have a non-email apple ID.

for people that have an @me or @mac userid that is no longer valid as email they are semi-screwed for anybody with NON @me/mac email, they can change their primary ID at well just not to/from @me addresses.

my iTunes appleid is just a word eg. MyName

I have a moble-me account MyName@me.com but that is NOT associated with iTunes, however i use it for iCloud syncing.

I was NOT allowed to combine them (me/mac rules) and i absolutely did NOT want to CHANGE my iTunes UserID and add yet another userID into my iTunes collection (i am at the limit of FIVE per device; if i add one more i can no longer sync my iPad).

Soo.... i added a new email address: myemail+itunes@domain.com as my ONLY email address with my MyName apple ID for iTunes. now my emails go through, my iTunes userID is the same as it ever was, no email associated with it etc.

there is NO real problem with the apple user ID for iTunes/iCloud etc NOT being an active email address it just is a 'handle' just like mine which has no @ in it, obviously not a valid email address. it can 'look' like an email address but not be one (myolddefunctemail@eworld.com) but the primary EMAIL can be myfunctioningemail@gmail.com for example.

i think more problems are just from the fact people made add'l unneessary IDs on the path to discovery.

-awr

How to fix it

my wonderful hubby decided to get himself an iphone 4 and i have the 4s but i had my apple Id for almost a year and now since he signed up for itunes he used my apple id and apple says i need to change mine and i have no clue how to do that and keeps all the music and stuff ive paid for.i thought if you changed apple ids then youncouldnt get your purchases what do think

I've had this problem, but with a slightly different slant. Essentially I've had an apple ID for years, and all my purchases (both itunes, app store and apple.com) are stored against it. When I signed up for a Mobile Me account I had a different email address (myname@me.com).

Fast forward to the iPhone 4 and I've got my iCloud account set up but can't use iMessage nor FaceTime with my old apple id. Everytime I tried to add the email address it would say that it was already in use. This was frustrating since my new contacts had my @me.com address where old ones had my older gmail address and I could get both addresses on to the same account.

So the solution I came up with was to edit my original gmail based apple id so it was myname+itunes@gmail.com (for those that don't know, you can append a plus sign and any valid text to your gmail address and it will route through correctly, very handy for filtering junk mail) and then went in to my @me.com account and added my gmail address to that. Bingo, both addresses now route to my phone correctly and I've still got my itunes account along with all the purchase history.

Gmail also allows you to put periods in the address, so for the sake of tidyness I might change myname+itunes@gmail.com to my.name@gmail.com shortly to mak eit easier to remember and reflect the fact it isn't only used for itunes.

I hope this helped someone out.

Glad to see somebody can benefit from the +itunes suggestion. you can't add . left of the @ however, that is a different address. e.g. post.office@domain.com not equal to postoffice@domain.com however post+office@domain.com = post@domain.com

some email services allow tagging with - vs + eg myname-itunes@yahoo.com so if it doesn't work with + try -

I was able to move my main email address to be assigned to my iCloud username once i used name+itunes@gmail as my primary email address for my iTunes account.

my primary apple ID doesn't have an email address it is simply 'myname'. there are a dwindling number of granfathered in name only apple ID folk out there but i'm keeping mine. I have another apple ID that is myname@me.com and they aren't connected, and since the second existed already i can't of course MERGE them; same problem that started this topic.

-awr

I have a similar question. I know I can't merge my two apple IDs, but as my ipod is linked to my old one and my new imac is linked to my new one, how do I get my ipod to sync? It claims it is syncing, but fails.