Apple ID and iCloud: Primary email address?

Does anybody know if this problem is going to be fixed by Apple?

I'm having a similiar issue. I added my .me address as my iCloud account but have no access to the email in the Mail app. I can access the email on icloud.com and through the Mail app on my Mac, but it isn't anywhere on my phone. Right now I use gmail for calendaring and contact storage, I'd love to move it all over to iCloud using my .me address but won't until this email thing is worked out. If anyone knows what I am talking about and have a fix please let me know.

Thanks.

It appears that Apple is starting to realize that they cannot use an email address as a primary identifier for an Apple ID

Right now me.com and mac.com users with Apple IDs cannot change their Apple ID, but other users can.

I suspect that Apple is moving to a structure where your account has an internal private ID number, and Apple ID (username), and finally email addresses attached to that Apple ID.

I would hope that future state would allow someone who made purchases in the past under different email addresses to merge all of their accounts under one unifiying Apple ID, which can be changed on a whim, because there is an internal ID that identifies the account as a whole.

Same issue for me.

I have a @btinternet.com address and want to get rid of it and send all correspondence to my @me.com address but get the following message:

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

Does anyone have any more news on this issue???

I had a mobileme account which I decided to just abandon and start over (granted I lost the increased disk space -- but that wasn't going to last anyway and I wanted to see if could live in the size they gave me.)

I created a new non-me.com address as my appleid and since my contacts, calendars, etc. are on my mac, they synced to the new account. The contacts were automatic. The calendars I had to 'export' from ical and then once I added the icloud account, I imported them. volia! data transferred!

I logged out of mobile-me before I started and any questions of keep or delete I answered 'keep'.

Now from reading this (not that I've tried it), sounds like once you have a non-me.com appleid, you can add a me.com id as your email in some kind of transitional hack. Perhaps once you have setup the non-me.com id, you can delete the me.com address you were using and then re-add it the new apple id you just created. I don't really expect that to work as I'm not sure you can actually delete an appleid, but it might be worth a test?

If you get both accounts setup in Mail, you should be able to transfer the mail messages by dragging from the old account to the new icloud account (drag 'n drop em).

Personally, I'm still using google for email until icloud gets its act together, so I don't know if this will work. After reading this pain, I'm glad I just decided to start clean.

Let us know if you try this and it works for you!

I have the same problem. I have a @gmail.com account that i use as Apple ID, now i want to use my new @me.com created with iCloud but i can't change.

Hope this gets fixed.

Lots of people are having this issue. Does anyone know if Apple monitors these discussion boards? I'd guess that they are already aware of this issue and I hope they go for the easy fix (allow ID merging!). If not, does anyone know of a better way of communicating with them?

Thanks!

I have a slightly different issue with the same outcome and even more issues. My AppleID, which I have had for years, is not an email account though there is one (a hotmail account) linked to the AppleID. When I upgraded and used my old AppleID, I was prompted that I had to supply an email account for an ID instead so I used the @hotmail.com email that is linked to my AppleID. Now my iPad is using the @hotmail.com ID and when I try to change it back I receive a message saying that the device has been assigned an ID that cannot be changed for 90 days.

I also cannot activate iCloud using my @hotmail.com account and hitting the 'resend activation email' link does nothing. And since I cannot use my original AppleID, I can't seem to use iCloud. Very frustrating as there appears to be a lot of benefits there.

Seems Apple would find a way that will allow users to merge our various ID and email accounts...

Seems their direct feedback channel is a better place to voice these desires:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html/

Just want to say that I have the same problem too.

You guys have it all wrong, there's 2 clouds, the iCloud that just came out which took over mobileme and the iTunes in the Cloud which holds your iTunes store purchases.

Since you had an iTunes account before your mobileme account those account will stay separate and you cannot combine them or transfer anything to and from them...

Use your mobileme address for the iCloud...

Use your regular email address for the iTunes store under settings>store.

If you really have to change it to a 3rd email address if the one it's currently under isn't a valid one.

Hope this help, thanks.

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falconer wrote:

[...]

We're talking about having one Apple ID with no previous MobileMe account ever. When you sign up for iCloud using an existing Apple ID, you get the opportunity to add a brand new @me.com email address to it. However, that new address gets stuck as an "alternative" address and cannot be made the "primary" address.

[...]

Only want to quote this to underline that THIS is our problem. 🙂

EDIT: I just found this https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3374540?answerId=16335074022#16335074022 . Seems that, for now, is not possible to make the new @me addres the primary address. Seems that Apple is working on this, too. 🙂

Same issue for me (as mentioned earlier in the thread):

I have a @btinternet.com address and want to get rid of it and send all correspondence to my @me.com address (created when i signed up to icloud). As per falconer, i get the following message:

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

I've not had a previous mobileMe account. This is purely based on iCloud setup.

Tried to call Apple today on this but was on hold for 30 mins.... Will update the thread if I find a solution. Thanks