Can I merge 2 Apple IDs?

Apple didn't do themselves (or us!) when they changed the goalposts for Apple ID formats. I've had an apple ID for three or four years, but when I bought an iPhone and tried to register iCloud my Apple ID was not in the required format - it needed an upper case letter, which my original ID did not have. So, I've ended up with two apple IDs - an iCloud/IOS App store one and and iTunes/ mac App store one. This is silly but it seems I cannot do anything about it. So now I invariably choose the wrong one first time around whatever I'm doing. Come on Apple this needs to be sorted.

I'm fairly convinced that there WAS a mention of how to merge IDs on the Apple site until quite recently but it certainly isn't there now. Maybe I just saw the question "How do I merge two Apple ID's?" and never got to read the answer that it was not possible.

Hi Yorkie29,

That's the issue I had. Since changing the newer Apple ID to a spare email, and then the original non-email Apple ID was allowed to be 'upgraded' into the email name. Everything that was mapped to the email still seems to be linked ok.

--Cynan.

Hi there

I have this issue too and it's driving me crazy. I've read your post a couple of times.....can I just get this clear please?

Say I have these 2 macids:

1) mymacid (original)

2) mynewmacid@me.com (new)

I already have an email address attached to (1) which is different to the email address attached to (2).....you talk about logging into the new ID (2 in my case) and changing the email address to a different new email address.

In my case, wouldn't it be the same thing if I logged into the original id (1) and simply changed that email address to the SAME email address as the new mac id (2) - wouldn't that work???? - or am I missing something here?

Many thanks!

Hi,

You can't change id 1 to an email address already attached to another account. This is why you need to change id 2 to use a different email address first.

Hope that. Helps,

--Cynan.

OK, I see. So, having changed ID 2 to a new email account, you're saying by changing ID 1 to the OLD email address of ID 2, it will merge the two accounts together somehow? (sorry if I'm being dumb over this - just want to get things clear in my mind before I start meddling!!).

Thanks for your help - and patience!! :-)

The only thing that I had on id 2 (my primary email address) was iTunes Match. All my app purchses were on id 1, and my email and calendar was in Google so I didn't have that to worry about.

My iCloud backup was also on id 2, but as the data was also on my phone I figured once I'd changed the ids I could then re-backup the phone to id 1 and I wouldn't lose anything.

iTunes Match seemed to be tired into the email directly, so when I changed id 1 to that email it just took over... and now id 2, using a spare email I can ignore and never need to touch it again.

If on your id 2 you do use iClouds email, or other services with lots of data stored against it then I'd be a bit more wary of switching like this..

Maybe you can export emails & calendar from iCloud/MobileMe and then import to another id later?? I don't know.. sorry.. I've never had to do that. Or maybe it'll move over like iTunes Match does. Or if it doesn't then I guess you could always set up a secondy iCloud account on your phone using the old and new ids, and have a 'transition' phase?

I say try and it and see.

You can always change the ids emails round again if needed.

--Cynan.

Hi, Cynan.

I'd very much like you to write this as a clearer guide, I'd love to follow it, but it's just slightly unclear to me, exactly what the proceedure is, it seems high-risk unless it's clarified.

I have an old hotmail based appleID which has all my apps, and an @me.com email addres Apple id which I've bought music and my itunes match subscription on, I want the hotmail appleID's content to end up owned by the @me.com so I can ditch the hotmail. Is that what your workaround does?

Thanks.

Hi,

I merged a non email address to an email address ID. I don't think it will work if you already have two email address IDs.

--Cynan.

iCONICA wrote:

Hi, Cynan.

I'd very much like you to write this as a clearer guide, I'd love to follow it, but it's just slightly unclear to me, exactly what the proceedure is, it seems high-risk unless it's clarified.

I have an old hotmail based appleID which has all my apps, and an @me.com email addres Apple id which I've bought music and my itunes match subscription on, I want the hotmail appleID's content to end up owned by the @me.com so I can ditch the hotmail. Is that what your workaround does?

Thanks.

You cannot merge two email address already in use as active AppleIDs. You can always change the primary email of an AppleID at https://appleid.apple.com/ with another email address and keep the account intact (ie. the purchases tied to it will stay tied to the new email address), but the new email address cannot be one already in use as an AppleID.

So you can never merge those purchases made on those two AppleIDs - you can alter the primary email address for them, but you can never get the two to be one and the same. And the purchases tied to each remain tied to each, regardless of how you mess about with the primary email addresses used for each.

The primary email is referred to as the AppleID, but really it is the identifier to an internally tracked account with Apple. While you can change the identifier to one that has never been used as an AppleID identifier before, you cannot actually change the internal account created when you first created that AppleID.

I'm in the same boat. I'm a mobileme legacy customer and was FORCED to create a new ID to get on iCloud. Now I have 2 "apple id's": one for my iCloud and one for my iTunes. It's as if Apple is forcing us to choose: Do you want to be able to buy and download music? Or do you want to be able to sync your calendars, reminder's, emails and contacts? But you can't have both under one roof. I love Apple and exculsivery use them across every technical platform possible. But they have really screwed the pooch on this one. Once they decided to get rid of mobilme, they should have given us the opportunity to either use your ME apple id as our iCloud apple id. Or just convert the ME account into the iCloud account. That would have obviously been the simpler solution. APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS FIASCO. Thank you in advance as I know you can do it!

I agree with many here. Whatever justification Apple have for this it's a real disservice to their long term customers.

I bought into the Apple ecosystem in the early days and liked the idea that everything in essence did sync sweetly together. I own a powerbook, two imacs, a macbook pro, and in my time variou ippods, iphones, and ipads. I now use an imac at home, my macbook on travel and the iphone and ipad between. I have had a .mac account, a .me account, now an icloud sync. My last few years have been spent losing sync, hunting down info or removing duplicates due to issues with my online accounts being either setup as .mac or .me depending which support agent you talked to without it ever working properly and also since app store came to osx, I now find the logins used initially for .mac/me sync of course are separate from those originally created for the early days of ipod music download.

I can't see why I can't have all my purchases and data syncd across all my devices and am frightened to lose all my purchases on any device if I'm daft enough to try and sync between them.

Apple really have to address this issue and I do not accept that it isn't simply done. It has to be a financial strategy. I'd be more than happy if I could merge my accounts and then delete access to all but one. Surely this would get past any issues/concerns of inappropriate sharing?

Ultimately, I can't see any reason why I can't just say to Apple "This is my most current email address and online identity, please transfer all my purchases and associated cloud data to this identity and disregard all others in the future". Isn't the whole point of cloud services that you can painlessly consolidate and synchronise?

I just can't believe there isn't a simple solution and still expect someone will post a reply saying "do x, y, z and it done". Am I being daft?

RichSoos wrote:

I just can't believe there isn't a simple solution and still expect someone will post a reply saying "do x, y, z and it done". Am I being daft?

You're not being daft, but there is no solution.

Ironic that the longer you have been an apple customer, the bigger your problem is because the more fragmentaton you're likely to encounter. If they watch these forums they should know that these problems are the main reason for my not upgrading/updating phones/pods/pads this year and much that I still love my kit, I'm not buying into the plan anymore until I can be sure that all my purchases are available to me on the devices I own and expect to see them on.

At first, I was pretty ticked at Apple too for not comming up with a solution.

I'm not mad at them anymore because I now realize that they have given us the best that the movie/music industry will allow.

Apple has agreed to tie each purchace to one email address for copyright reasons.

You can change the email address of any Apple ID to an email address that is not already an Apple ID and not a me.com address; however, if you do change it, you may need to re-download all purchases for that account to make all purchases properly and consistantly associate with that new primary Apple ID email address.

Now here is a solution for those of you who made purchases from different Apple IDs.

1. Pick the Apple ID that you have made most if not all of your Movie & App purchases with and make it your primary Apple ID/Acount that you make all new purchases with.

2. Create an AAC version of your music purchases from your other Apple ID's. This may in and of itself strip the DRM copy protection from it, but if not, you may need to take the extra steps of burning it to a disk (re-writeable) and then ripping it back to the MAC. Then it will play when signed into any Apple ID or none at all. Be sure to set your write and rip settings in iTunes appropriately. [For the best quality music you may even choose to upload your lower quality music up to iTunes Match and then down load from iTunes Match a better quality copy DRM free.

This should get most, if not all of your iTunes library under one Apple ID.

An Apple representative told me that the same can be done with movies to get them to play reguardless of which account is signed in; however, it can only be redownloaded from it's original Apple ID as you might expect. Good luck burning and ripping a high def movie however. Not saying it can't be done, it you've got the right equiptment, but goodluck.

What I hate is that I cannot take my Apple ID's Alternate email address (which is a me.com address necessary for iCloud's Mail and permantly linked to that Apple ID) and make it the Apple ID's primary email address. Apple's reason to disallow this appears to be that Apple....

1. wants us to by billed for iTunes at a non-me.com address so that they can still reach us if they decide to disable our Apple ID/iCloud account for any reason.

2. perhaps wants to avoid explaining their customers how to redownload all purchases which seems techie, cumbersome, unsmooth (and therefore un-Apple).

3. wants a non-me.com address that they can send password reset info to.