Q: I mistakenly hit the unsubscribe option of a friend's photostream invite.  How can I resubscribe?

I'm also interested in how to do this. During testing I clicked on the unsubscribe link in the invitation email and I was immediately removed...no confirmation, no nothing...just gone! Now the email address I was using for testing shared photostreams apparantly cannot be used anymore and there does not seem to be any way to reinstate it!

I have spent a lot of time searching for a way to fix this, and have found nothing. You can see an example of how utterly useless Aperture's documentation is for this here:

http://help.apple.com/aperture/mac/3.3/#apr0ce2df90

If it really works as I've described, then it is a terrible implementation on Apple's part. If I'm missing something, then I sure wish a solution was more obvious.

Peggy,see this support article  about

using and troubleshooting shared photo streams.

If you declined an invitation,  you have to ask your friend to send you a new invitation.

I declined an invitation to join a shared photo stream, but I've changed my mind. How do I join this stream?

You will need to send a message to the creator of the shared photo stream and ask him or her to re-invite you.

But if you opted out and unsubscribed of receiving photo stream invitations altogether, you will have to contact Apple to fix this, there seems to be no easier way right now:

I opted out of receiving Shared Photo Stream invitations and emails, but now I'd like to subscribe to a shared photo stream.

If you have opted out of receiving emails about Photo Stream, contact Apple Support to re-enable invitations and emails.

Regards

Léonie

Léonie,

Thanks for the link to that KB article.

But I thought it would be useful to share what is going on after contacting "Apple Support to re-enable invitations and emails" as directed to do in the article.

Following the link in the article and initiating a support request, I received a call back from Apple almost immediately (very good response). The extremely helpful tech rep I talked with understood the issue I described, but after some research could not offer a solution. He immediately escalated to a senior support rep, who again was very helpful and understood the problem. But once more, after some time that rep could not come up with a solution and would investigate further and call me back. A call back from the senior support rep indicated that after hours of work no one is able to fix the problem, namely reverse the opt-out. Apparently whatever procedures are in place to fix the problem do not work. The whole incident has now been escalated to a higher level internally, and we are awaiting resolution.

I must add that both reps I spoke with were very timely and professional in their handling of the issue, but simply could not find a solution given the resources they had to work with.

So...

1. Contacting Apple Support per the KB article will do nothing to fix the issue, at least at this point. Hopefully they will come up with something as a result of researching the problem.

2. The whole episode could well have been prevented for me, and undoubtedly many others, if they had implemented the opt-out link correctly in the first place. Incorporating a confirmation dialog specifically stating that once you opt-out that it will be a major effort to get reinstated (assuming you even can at some point) would have avoided the whole thing, at least for me.

3. Finally, look at the man-hours (= $$$) that Apple, me and untold numbers of others are wasting because of a feature that obviously hasn't been well thought out and tested prior to release.

This whole thing makes me wonder if Apple developers even try to use the products they develop prior to release. I'm not talking about testing for failures, but rather testing the actual usability of a product. Apple is very closed regarding their beta testing, but maybe they need to open up beta availability to some extent and include some more real users prior to release. 

To any users reading this, whatever you do don't opt-out of a photostream sharing invitation until Apple gets this resolved.