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Why can't I use my iCloud email address as my Apple ID

When I want to enter my iCloud email address (like foo@icloud.com) as my Apple ID, the system at appleid.apple.com tells me that I can't use an email address with a domain owned by Apple as my Apple ID which I find odd enough. I tried to create a new Apple ID through appleid.apple.com just to see what happens and even then it says that you cannot use an email address with an Apple domain.


It becomes even more odd when you consider that, if I'm not wrong, you can very well create a new Apple ID and use a new @icloud.com email address if you do it with an iPhone.


I can use my iCloud address as the primary email address of my Apple ID account so it's not a huge problem, but it still annoys me a little bit that the name of my Apple ID has to continue being my obsolete Gmail address.


Does anyone have more information on this?

Posted on Oct 15, 2012 8:45 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 24, 2013 9:01 PM

Hi -


As per reitermoritz's reply to my comment on the 20th March 2013, I feel s_rafida has again missed the point slightly and is still being misunderstood. Like the other other Apple customers here, we don't want to have 2, 3, 10 or 7 email addresses. We want ONE. Because we had (now in hindsight directly caused this problem) by using a NON-APPLE email intially as the ID and then an @icloud address for the icloud account and email, we are the ones NOT in a position to get rid of the email associated with the ID and move it to the icloud email address. There are fortunate people out there who have set-up new accounts, devices from scratch who were not Apple customers before that have been able to from the very beginning have their icloud address as their Apple ID, and therefore ONE account.


This means that us poor sods have to go through the inconvenince and frankly seamingly unecessary pain to create digital clutter in our lives and be forced to open some unused email account simply to use it as an Apple ID. What an utterly perposterous and cumbersome system.


I think it is ridiculous.

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Jun 19, 2013 6:57 AM in response to ivens

I guess you could write a mail to Apple's support. But as Apple is not very famous for transparency I wouldn't expect a satisfying answer. Maybe clicking "I have this question too" in my opening posting could eventually raise some Apple employees attention to this problem if enough people show this way that they are unsatisfied with the situation.

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Jun 19, 2013 7:06 AM in response to reitermoritz

Yup, I already cliked "I have this question too" in the opening post.

I discovered that Apple has a feedback page (apple.com/feedback).

Then I selected iCloud and explained the problem.

Maybe they will never answer me, but that's another way of telling them the issue we are having.

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Sep 10, 2013 10:18 AM in response to reitermoritz

I'm in a similar position , I've just been told my current email supplier is cancelling their .co.uk accounts. So sensibly I though I'd use my apple email address for everything. Ironically itunes is the one place it appears I can't use it. Once it's gone will my receipts etv be sent to my secondary email?

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Sep 12, 2013 4:04 PM in response to reitermoritz

I don't get this either. A lot of folks were saying it's due to the danger of losing your icloud.com login information and you won't be able to retrieve the information. But the same can be said about any other web service. That's why Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc have all those double, triple security measures like security questions, alternative email address and whathaveyou.


This is the only reason I never use my iCloud.com email. I don't want to have to tend to too many email address. Since I have to do that with my primary Apple Id, I'm not gonna bother with the icloud.com alternative address. Being on the Apple system everywhere else, I would love to be able to use icloud.com email all the time for reasons of aesthetics and uniformity.

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Nov 24, 2013 6:36 AM in response to reitermoritz

Hello Guys!


The answer to that is no, you will not be able to use your iCloud email to update any of your existing Apple IDs. The reason for that, as I mentioned earlier, is that emails created in iCloud are already considered Apple IDs. For example if you have a non-working gmail appleID, you can go to appleid.apple.com to update it to a new email (as long as the one that you will used to update it is not own by Apple @icloud.com, @me.com and @mac.com).


To make it simple, the only time that you can use your iCloud Apple ID in the iTunes Store is if you're creating a new account.


As per Apple, it is also not possible to merge two apple ids together. For me this is more convenient because if your entire household is using one Apple ID that means sharing everything including private messages.


The only disadvantage of using multiple Apple Ids is when you also use them all in the iTunes Store. I believe this is something to do with anti-piracy. When you purchase something in the iTunes Store you will need to authorize the item using the iTunes Store account used to purchase it.


just to remove the confusion, an apple ID is NOT an iTunes Store account until you register it in the iTunes Store. And an iTunes Store account is already an Apple ID.


iTunes Store account is an Apple ID

iCLoud account is an Apple ID


Therefore, you cannot update an Apple ID with another Apple ID


Thank you.

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Nov 25, 2013 12:54 AM in response to mswcpt

Thank you, mswcpt, you nailed it.


To s_rafida and others who try to excuse Apple with flimsy explanations here: Of course it would take some technical effort on Apples side to improve the situation but no one managed to coherently explain why it couldn't be done so far.


Apples claim is to strive for perfection in the user experience of their products and that is what I expect from them - also in the details - when I pay twice as much for their products than for those of their competitors.

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Nov 25, 2013 4:06 AM in response to reitermoritz

Again, we are weighing in on this important thread...


We do not want our icloud master account tied to an offshore email account anymore. We want to use our icloud account as our MASTER EMAIL ACCOUNT.


Cudos to those in this thread who get that. Thank you for weighing in, too.


However, we are entertaining the idea that it might not matter if our icloud account is tied to an offshore account. What if my offshore account goes out of business? Will that KILL my master icloud account?


Great question, huh?

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Nov 25, 2013 4:17 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

I'm sorry, but this is PRECISELY what we want to avoid: "Create a new email address, for example at Yahoo or Gmail, or anywhere convenient (or you can use an existing address as long as it has never been associated with an Apple ID)"


If the reponses are read thoroughly, this is exactly what we as Apple customers do not want. I, as with the others, do NOT want a bloomin' Yahoo or Gmail email address... That is the problem!

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Nov 25, 2013 4:36 AM in response to reitermoritz

reitermoritz wrote:


For god's sake, Roger, would you please stop it? What you explain there has nothing to do with the problem.

I'm sorry if you found my post, explaining what you can do, unhelpful, but your problem is that you want to do something you can't do, and nothing posted here can change that. I've posted the feedback URL in my post above.


And, incidentally, Dave Black, to whom I was actually responding, asked what would happen if the service providing the address which forms his ID should go out of business, and I answered that.

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Nov 25, 2013 5:50 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks Roger - I will give them feedback, because this is corporate manipulation of the consumer. I want NOTHING to do with gmail or yahoo but we are forced to create free email aliases with online webmail companies like that in order to have a valid Apple ID/iCloud setup if you just so happened to do it wrong during the initial setup of your Apple accounts. It does grate my gander when consumers are forced to do things like this by big corporates.

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Nov 25, 2013 8:11 AM in response to Dave Black

Dave Black wrote:


Bless your heart Roger, your advice is great but not valid to the subject matter.


Subj Matter: We do not want our icloud accounts tied to an offshore email account. I'm using "offshore" as an acronym here. Some will get that, others will not.

You did ask 'What if my offshore account goes out of business? Will that KILL my master icloud account?' and I offered you the procedure to follow should that event occur.

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Nov 25, 2013 8:17 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Roger, honestly I agree with others in the sense that you are suggesting the solution to another problem. That is not the problem we want to solve. Despite the undelying motivation, technically we want our MASTER icloud ID to be an @icloud.com address. Something that seems not possible so far.


But anyway thanks for the URL, I will write to apple about this issue. Honestly I do not care if this is a lot of work for them. When I buy those expensive devices I seriously pretend a superior service.


Ciao.

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Why can't I use my iCloud email address as my Apple ID

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