iCloud+ Custom email domain & Family sharing & Unable to transfer addresses to family

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Level 1

22 points

iCloud+ Custom email domain & Family sharing & Unable to transfer addresses to family

TLDR: Addresses on custom email domains cannot be transferred between family members, ever

Hi all,

I was excited about the custom email domain support. I have a family with four of us, two parents, two kids, all with icloud accounts, and wanted to make use of family sharing for our domain. However I hit a few snags, so I thought would share the issue I ran into as a warning to others.

The plan was (using family.com as an example of the domain I was transferring):

father@family.com -> my icloud
mother@family.com -> my wifes icloud
daughter@family.com -> my daughters icloud
son@family.com -> my sons icloud

Adding the custom email domain was surprisingly easy, all was fine with my and my wifes transfer, however my son and daughters icloud accounts didn't have 2FA enabled, so during the transfer it wouldn't let me transfer any email addresses to them, to complete the transfer instead I just had their email address temporarily added on my account. This was a big mistake!! (which I didn't realise at the time)

After I setup 2FA on my kids accounts, I removed the daughter@family.com and son@family.com from my account in the custom email management in iCloud settings. However it then wouldn't let me add it to theirs with a generic "There was a problem adding this email address" error.

I tried lots including removing / re-setting up the custom email domain completely to no avail.

After speaking to Apple support, it turns out that they permanently attach any email address you use on a custom email domain to that iCloud account (even if you remove it). Meaning that even though thats my domain shared and available on family sharing, because I temporarily used my kids email aliases on my account, even though they are no longer on my account, it can never be transferred back to my kids accounts, ever.

I've asked them to escalate to their engineers to see if they can "unhook" those emails from my account behind the scenes. But I thought would share this as a warning, as if they can't fix my kids emails then will have to move away from iCloud for mail again (which is a shame as would have made life so much easier!). Ah well :-(

Posted on Oct 5, 2021 2:39 AM

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Answer 1

Killer Cow Author

Level 1

22 points

Oct 11, 2021 3:21 AM in response to Killer Cow

Adding a simpler summary, in case this makes it way to the iCloud Custom Email Domain development team:

Steps to reproduce:

Using a web browser on any desktop PC to access iCloud
Using two iCloud accounts: a@icloud.com and b@icloud.com linked via Family Sharing
User: a@icloud.com logins in to iCloud settings and transfers custom email domain "family.com", allows family sharing
During transfer, they migrate both "a@family.com" and "b@family.com" to their account (maybe because b@icloud.com hadn't setup 2FA yet so wasn't available to have any email addresses transferred to them)
User: a@icloud.com then removes the "b@family.com" custom email domain alias from their account, for their family to use
User: b@icloud.com logs in and attempts to add the "b@family.com" custom email domain alias to their account

Expected behaviour:

Email address "b@family.com" should be able to be registered with user b@icloud.com

Actual behaviour:

An error occurs when user b@icloud.com saying "There was a problem adding this email address"
Additionally it appears some devices for a@icloud.com still show "b@family.com" on their iCloud mail settings page

Additional notes:

It appears when an email address from a custom email domain is removed from an account, it is not fully unlinked from that iCloud account. This stops other family members from being able to use that email address.

Users with custom email domains need to be in control of where their email addresses are allocated, and there shouldn't be unexpected restrictions. There are legitimate reasons why a user may have initially transferred an email address to their account first without knowing about this restriction. (e.g. in this example the family member with account b@icloud.com did not have 2FA enabled on their account at the time of the transfer so were not able to have aliases added to their account)

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Answer 2

Killer Cow Author

Level 1

22 points

Nov 22, 2021 10:04 AM in response to Killer Cow

Update: Although the last time I spoke to Apple Support, they were waiting on further information/resolution from the developers, I tried chasing Apple Support about my case I found they had just closed it behind the scenes..

So I presume I have to call them / create a new case and walk through everything with another engineer on the line, though I presume its an issue they are unfortunately not looking to fix.. :-(

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Answer 3

ddeacon

Level 1

25 points

Jan 2, 2022 6:17 PM in response to Killer Cow

FYI I ran into the same problem basically doing the same thing. I've not officially moved my domain over from the previous configuration where I was running a server at home (was running both in parallel with different priority MX servers). For me, this whole scenario is a deal breaker for fully moving over to iCloud Custom domain, it has so much promise but if I can't move my wife's email over which she has used for over 10 years, I can't justify changing her address. It would be easier to just move over to Microsoft 365 Family instead. Though by now Apple would have come around and fixed this but just did a check and alas, still not able to add her address into her iCloud account.

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Answer 4

Feb 15, 2022 7:38 AM in response to Killer Cow

Thanks for posting here. I ended up moving over to another mail-server. That was a bummer since the iCloud+ storage allocation but seemed like a good deal.

My OCD on emails being correct just couldn't be helped.

Still stuck with my daughter not being able to attach her apple-ID to the correct email. Maybe eventually these kind of things will fall into ICANN regulations and they'll have to fix it. (only wishful thinking)

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