Q: Unable to receive mail on my son's .me and/or .mac and/or .icloud account
Hi there,
A few years ago I set up email addresses for my whole family when it was mobileMe. My son was younger and hasn't used his until now. I have tried repeatedly over the last couple of weeks to send him messages, but every time I get an error dialog that says:
Cannot send message using the server iCloud (iCloud)
Verify that you have addressed this message correctly. Check your SMTP server settings in Mail preferences and verify any advanced settings with your system administrator.
The server response was: unknown or illegal alias: firstname.lastname@icloud.com
Select a different outgoing mail server from the list below or click Try Later to leave the message in your Outbox until it can be sent.
I have done some reading but can;t find a clar path to try here.
I am able to login to appleid.apple.com with his credentials no problem and can see all 3 of his aliases verified there:
I see that his primary is set to @mac.com but cannot see any way to change this to @icloud. All I can do is select "Edit" or "Delete". Edit just asks me to verify the address. I retype the address and it returns to the same screen as before. I am not able to set anyhting else.
I tried ading a phone number and changing a couple of other settings thinking it might cause it to be "activated" or something, but nothing has worked.
One last thought - i am able to log in to his account at icloud.com, and I am even able to SEND an email to me, but when i reply to it, it fails with the same messge.
Clear Apple thinks this address/these addresses are not active, but why?
Any thoughts much appreciated,
UPDATE: I fixed it. As I was writing this, it occurred to me that the one thing I had not tried was changing his password, so I logged into appleid.apple.com, reset his password and it worked!
Problem solved. I'll leave this up here hoping it may help someone else.
Message was edited by: db
MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
Posted on Feb 17, 2014 1:17 AM