magen180 wrote:
this is what it said: “account being signed into already exists”
That is a bug, or complication, in the operating system and the overall design of modern systems. They actually don't use passwords anymore. They use "secure tokens". But it ends up being very confusing.
I experienced this exact problem recently when Apple forcibly upgraded my computer to Sonoma against my consent. My restore from backup didn't work due to corrupt files, so I totally erased the computer and set it up again as a new one.
This was a frustrating and confusing process. I did eventually get my e-mail working again. But it was definitely a situation where I had to do the same thing 3 times in a row before it eventually worked. Don't they say that is the definition of insanity? Well, that equation doesn't mean anything when the whole world's gone mad. I had another alumni account from my university that I lost entirely. I could probably contact them directly and get it back, but I don't really need that account.
But I do understand the frustration of having these things just decide to take over your life one day and your attempts to rationally figure it out and put things back in order simply don't work. Surely, these big companies like Apple and Microsoft could figure out how to logically make these things work? No, they can't.