iCloud and a new me.com account: can't use it as a primary address in my AppleID.

Same problem, when I tried to set me.com to primary Apple ID email address, it says below!

"You cannot create an Apple ID using a MobileMe account. If this is your email address, it is also your Apple ID."

Need help urgently!

Because your new @me.com address is also an AppleID you can't add it to an existing AppleID as you are effectively trying to merge two Apple IDs into one, which isn't possible.

The me.com address is a given one when I registered iCloud.

So I tried this on my iPhone, Mac iTunes, iCloud.com, same result:

Log out my existing Gmail Apple ID, sign in with me.com address.

View account detail, the old same Gmail Apple ID come!

Then I think me.com and my old Gmail Apple ID are actually indicating the same one, but for I can not set me.com as my primary email address ( which is very uncomfortable).

By signing up to iCloud seperately to your existing GMail Apple ID, you've created a second Apple ID. By trying to add your new @me.com email address to your existing GMail Apple ID you are effectively trying to merge two Apple IDs.

You should've used your GMail Apple ID to sign up to iCloud, and then created a new @me.com email address associated with that iCloud account.

Not sure if there is any solution to that. Try contacting iCloud support.

Yes I'm going for Apple Genius and hope they will help.

I did exactly what Julian suggested - sign up to iCloud via my Gmail that picked a me.com email address but I have the same problem as you.

I does make sense that me.com email [account] has merged for an existing Apple ID to preserve purchase history, but you'd think it would be simple to change your primary email to me.com once they've merged.

I am in a similar case. I am using a gmail address for a long time. However I had a Mobile me address as well. Now I have two separate apple ids I can't merge them it is a real mess.

I really want to merge them.

Any idea ?

Thanks in advance.

You might as well try the following.

Go to appleid.apple.com.

Log in with your yahoo.com AppleID. Edit that AppleID, its primary and alternate addresses to match the ones you already have at your me.com AppleID.

It might not allow you to do it, since you already exist with your me.com AppleID, but it might be worth a try. Alternatively, you can keep the yahoo.com AppleID, but point both its Primary and Alternate addresses somewhere else, i.e. your me.com or some other account that you use frequently, artificially "merging" the accounts.

If none of this works, as a last resort, replace in iTunes store, support, communities, etc., your yahoo.com AppleID with your me.com AppleID, and just stop using the first one.

Yes this is an known issue Apple is expecting a great number of users to have to do (currently – there is semi-substantiated rumours they are designing a Apple ID merging system; but I'll believe that when I see it).

I (and almost everyone I know) have an issue like this:

Before we signed up to me.com we all had our iTunes Apple ID's. But annoyingly, Apple automatically sets-up a new Apple ID for all me.com email addresses as well. So we all had:

(1) our original Apple ID: "whatever" (usually we used a NON-email address for this, eg. ""firstname.lastname")

Then we went into appleid.apple.com and made the contact email our new me.com address.

(2) then we ALSO had the auto set-up me.com Apple ID, always the full email: eg. firstname.lastname@me.com

We all ignored this Apple ID, and NEVER used it to log into anything Store related (just used for the email/contacts/etc. set-ups).

For this new stuff you should do this:

(3) make sure you use the FULL email (ie. example #2 above) for the set-up and use of your Apple ID for anything "iCloud" related.

(4) make sure you use only the ALIAS part of the email [just the front bit before the @, in my case above] (ie. example #1 above) for the set-up and use of your Apple ID for anything "iTunes" related (basically all the stores, iTunes/Mac App Store).

- on iOS devices go into Settings>Store and log-in using your iTunes Apple ID there.

- on Macs, in iTunes AND the Mac App Store, make sure your logged-in using your iTunes Apple ID there.

So yes, you have to use two Apple ID's (one for iCloud, one for iTunes/MAS) for the moment.

This is annoying as they are (a) forcing you to use TWO Apple ID's, & (b) they are forcing you to use the full email address for your iCloud Apple ID (though perhaps understandable, as everyone is being issued a me.com for the iCloud service, so this may help people to remember the exact email domain address they are using when logging in).

Hope this helps. — well, at least until Apple fix so accounts can be merged in the future sometime, one wonders! ;-)

Thank you for you reply. You perfectly described the issue.

For my part I have decided to use only my new iCloud account based on my gmail address (and first apple id) because all the purchases I have done are linked to this account.

As a result I don't have the free iCloud space I had with my Mobile Me account. I will call the Apple Care next week to explain the issue and ask for some free space on my new account as a compensation.

I recommend to the people who were not using Mobile Me for an email purpose and who are facing the problem describe above to migrate everything on their first apple id. Having two apple ids, one for icloud, and one for the appstore will be more complicated then.

Hey folks,

i am very frustrated. I like Apple a lot and so the new iCloud-Service, too.

My issues:

I had a single Apple ID used for everything and set up for mobileme, before I bought software for my iPhone.

BUT i was able to sign in with firstnamelastname ONLY. WITHOUT the "@me.com" suffix. My primary Mail-Address was the me.com Address. No other address was added.

MOVEMENT TO iCLOUD:

So i did my move to iCloud and supprisingly i had to enter firstnamelastname@me.com as Apple ID, BUT I didn't know, that i would create a new one.

SO I ACCIDENTLY CREATED A 2nd ME.COM APPLE ID.

Please help me out of that dilemma, Apple!!! Now, not even Mail is working, neither on icloud.com nor on my iMac and I think my iPhone isn't receiving mails, too.

Anybody the same Experiances???

@jimthing i didn't understand everything you posted. But I think my problems are pretty much the same as yours.

What do we do now?

Please help me and reply.

Yes I have the same problem. I have a gmail account. As a soon as the cloud has come out this week, I wanted to move everything over to the Cloud and use my new @me account as my primary account. Yet, and this is crazy, you can't use your .me account as your Apple ID, it won't let you. So, Apple is forcing me to use my gmail email as my primary email account and apple id -- that is way crazy. I get this erorr: You cannot create an Apple ID using a MobileMe account. If this is your email address, it is also your Apple ID.

That's correct; you will have TWO Apple ID accounts.

While this is not ideal, it should work fine. You simply use iCloud with the NEW Apple ID (ie. FULL email address one), then *also* sign-in on all device Stores with your OLD Apple ID (ie. the one with just the alias bit before the @).

This means that all Store purchases will remain under your OLD non-full email Apple ID, but the iCloud sync services will work under the NEW full email address Apple ID.

This is as Apple have desscribed in their various Helps and knowledgebase kb topics, so things should work fine if you do this — erm, hopefully. :-|

...then, hopefully, in the near future Apple *should* (fingers crossed) introduce a merge system. (already really needed for those who have loads of separate Apple IDs even before iCloud/iOS 5 arrived!).