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Facetime error: "Unable to verify email because it is already in use."

So am I meant to use another email account just to use Facetime?

imac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 4 GB ram

Posted on Feb 24, 2011 12:37 PM

Reply
10 replies

Feb 24, 2011 7:59 PM in response to duncantho

Hi,

I found this in the FaceTime Help viewer.



To sign in using an Apple ID:

Open FaceTime.

If necessary, sign out of FaceTime as described below.

Do one of the following:

Enter your Apple ID and password, and then click Sign In.

If an Apple ID is displayed and you want to use it, click Sign In.

If there’s an Apple ID displayed but you want to use a different one, enter an Apple ID and password, and then click Sign In.

Enter the email address others can use to call you in FaceTime, and then click Next to sign in.

*If this is the first time you’ve used the email address in FaceTime, check for a new email message from Apple requesting that you verify the address is a valid one to associate with your Apple ID. Simply click the Verify Now link in the message, and then enter your Apple ID and password.*

After signing in, you can add an additional email address and adjust other FaceTime settings.

You will be able to access FaceTime preferences once you can login.

You might try resetting your AppleID password here.













Carolyn 🙂

Feb 25, 2011 11:31 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

Yes, I came across those instructions. They do me no good. I found in my records that I actually have a second Apple ID, using my (same) email address. Whichever ID I try, Facetime refuses to verify the address.

I've since been to "May Apple ID" where I'm told that my email address is "not verified". When I click on "verify now" I get no feedback but I'm guessing that it can't verify. A mystery, as that's the email Apple uses to send billing info from the App store and iTunes.

Anyway, bottom line is Facetime doesn't like my email address. And I'm not about to change it.

Feb 26, 2011 3:15 PM in response to duncantho

I had an error when trying to verify my email address in facetime for mac.

The root cause was I had verified that email on an older, forgotten appleid.

The solution was to go to appleid.apple.com and search for your old appleid.

Once found I changed the primary email address on the "old" account and then verified the email address on the "new" appleid account.

Then I added the email address to facetime (using "new" appleid) and this worked.

I found the original facetime error frustrating as it gave no hint that the email address was in use elsewhere. Perhaps a security consideration?

Feb 26, 2011 11:30 PM in response to duncantho

i dealt with this today. Make sure you only have one apple i.d. that is associated with the email address that you need to verify. For example, i had an itunes id that was xxx@mac.com that was assoc. with my xxx@hotmail.com account. My hotmail account can only be associated with my apple id that is the xxx@hotmail.com otherwise the computer gets confused. I couldn't figure out how to delete my mac.com id so i just entered xxx@mac.com as the email address for that account which is not really an email account but it doesn't matter. i only want my xxx@hotmail.com apple id account to be assoc. w/ a valid email account. Does this make any sense? It took me all day with two small children and also calling apple help line, which couldn't help me so I hope this helps you a little bit faster!

Mar 5, 2011 7:22 PM in response to duncantho

Exactly the same problem here. Neither iTunes store neither Face-time accepts my AppleID as my primary email address. I found out I have a couple other AppleIDs (from old forums and stuff) but I can't even recover their passwords.

I guess our best bet is to contact apple itunes support to search and delete other old accounts we might have.

Mar 14, 2011 7:02 PM in response to rimi

I finally fixed my problem but not thru the iTunes Support. iTunes support was very slow at responding to my emails (the only way of contacting them) and the answers were very standard and would not respond to my question. So I called the iMac support about checking which products were registered under my AppleID and finally asked them to check which AppleIDs were associated with my email address. They came out with a couple AppleIDs I had used for forums and so. I was then able to associate those old AppleIDs with trashy email addresses and finally associate my ID with my real email address.

Jun 2, 2011 8:31 PM in response to rimi

rimi, You finally hit on the right solution. I have been a little haphazard in creating Apple IDs over the years. Partly Apple's fault for not making it clear that iTunes and the Store etc. all use the same ID. Anyway, after a couple of chats and some experimentation I discovered that I actually had 4 Apple IDs! The oldest one wasn't even an email address it was more like a user name. My primary email address was associated that name and was keeping the more recent IDs from associating with FaceTime properly since I was trying to use the primary email address in a newer account that was a dup of the original account.


If you go to link https://appleid.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MyAppleId.woa?localang=en_US

you can look up your ID by entering your expected email addresses. It found my primary old account and reset the PW but I couldn't then log in because I didn't have the correct ID. The solution was to change the email address in accounts I could see to something besides the primary address (I used real addresses, apparently you found that bogus ones would work too.) Then I could search for the primary address in my original ID, reset the PW and finally get logged in to the original account.


FYI, I called Apple help a couple of times and asked them to tell me my accounts, but they didn't see (or least didn't mention) the oldest one that was causing the issue by having my primary email associated with more than one Apple ID. Unfortunately Apple apparently has no way to merge into one account. The only option is to delete an account but you loose any purchases made against that account.

Apr 3, 2013 12:43 PM in response to duncantho

I think we have a solution if you are not able to get an email address to verify correctly in FaceTime on your iPad. If you go to Settings>General and then scroll to the bottom of the page...you'll see Reset Settings. Select that and then select Reset All Settings. Once you have done this you should be able to set up FaceTime normally again.


This worked for us after hours of frustration! 😀


Hope this helps someone....

Facetime error: "Unable to verify email because it is already in use."

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