Need help combining my two Apple IDs (both are mine)

Question

Level 1

10 points

Need help combining my two Apple IDs (both are mine)

At the moment I have two Apple IDs on my iPhone 5s. When iCloud was first introduced, I made the mistake of creating a second Apple ID just to use for iCloud. So here is my current situation:

Apple ID 1

Has all my iTunes and App Store purchases.

Apple ID 2

Currently being used for iCloud on my iPhone
iCloud Drive
Photos (iCloud Photo Sharing only - I have some albums shared with people)
Contacts
Reminders
Safari
Notes
Passbook
Backup
Keychain
Find My iPhone
Documents & Data
- 1Password vault
- Day One journal
- Game progress for games currently on my iPhone
- Game progress for games NOT currently on my iPhone
- Data for various other apps, some of which say "Encrypted File"

I only want to use only one Apple ID, which will obviously be Apple ID 1 since it has all my purchases. How can I safely move everything associated with Apple ID 2 to Apple ID 1?

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.3

Posted on May 28, 2015 9:04 AM

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Answer 1

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

May 28, 2015 9:07 AM in response to dbird03

You can not.

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Answer 2

dbird03 Author

Level 1

10 points

May 28, 2015 9:17 AM in response to Csound1

What if I do these steps?

Download all the games and apps that have iCloud saved data on my Apple ID 2.
Make sure the Documents & Data get downloaded from iCloud to those games and apps and stored locally on my iPhone.
Sign out of iCloud (Apple ID 2), and choose Keep on My iPhone when it asks what to do with existing iCloud data.
Sign in to iCloud using Apple ID 1.
Open all games and apps on my iPhone and tell them to use iCloud to save data.

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Answer 3

May 28, 2015 9:19 AM in response to dbird03

The data and info is tied to the original Apple ID - so are all of the purchases. You can certainly do the "Keep on my Phone" and then "Merge" part, but that is about it....

Sorry,

GB

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Answer 4

dbird03 Author

Level 1

10 points

May 28, 2015 9:25 AM in response to gail from maine

The purchases are only tied to Apple ID 1. Apple ID 2 is just for iCloud data. I know all those games and apps have the option to store their data locally. So can't I just open them all up, tell them to store things locally instead of iCloud, sign out of iCloud (Apple ID 2), sign in to iCloud with Apple ID 1, go back to the apps and tell them to save data to iCloud? I don't understand why this wouldn't work.

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Answer 5

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,371 points

May 28, 2015 9:27 AM in response to dbird03

Because the apps are locked to the ID used to purchase/download them. Even if you told it to save data to whatever Apple ID you want, when it came time to update the app or if necessary download the app again, it could only be done by the Apple ID used for the purchase. Data means nothing when it comes to the ID used for purchase/download.

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Answer 6

dbird03 Author

Level 1

10 points

May 28, 2015 9:31 AM in response to ChrisJ4203

The apps are "locked" to Apple ID 1 because that's the Apple ID I used to purchase them. This is the only Apple ID I want to use. I want to get rid of Apple ID 2 since it doesn't have any purchases "locked" to it. It just has my iCloud data like contacts and game saves and all that stuff.

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Answer 7

May 28, 2015 9:53 AM in response to dbird03

So, why don't you just try signing out of Apple ID 2 wherever it is signed in, and sign Apple ID 1 in those places and see what happens?

GB

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Answer 8

dbird03 Author

Level 1

10 points

May 28, 2015 12:41 PM in response to gail from maine

Because I'm unsure if that will screw anything up, which is why I am asking the question in the first place.

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Answer 9

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

May 28, 2015 2:03 PM in response to dbird03

Sign in to iCloud using ID2

Sign into the iTunes & App Store using ID1

Do this on all devices, Macs included.

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Answer 10

Chris CA

Level 10

82,440 points

May 28, 2015 2:25 PM in response to dbird03

It should not screw up anything.

Sign out of iCloud (from AppleID 2) and sign back in using AppleID1.

Everything should be logged in with AppleID 1.

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Answer 11

dbird03 Author

Level 1

10 points

May 30, 2015 9:18 AM in response to dbird03

I was able to successfully download my iCloud data to the local storage for most of my games and apps except for a few. I guess it's not a huge problem at the moment to have two Apple IDs. It's just really inconvenient. :/

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Answer 12

kalrich

Level 1

4 points

Aug 15, 2016 9:42 AM in response to dbird03

Agree, it's really inconvenient and certain to become a real issue at some time in the near future with iOS/OSX updates as Apple continue to stress the importance of having "one" Apple ID. I have researched this issue for the last month and spoke with a number of Apple reps, all of which seem to be unaware. We don't want to merge two Apple IDs, we want to merge the iCloud ID (we were forced to set up when MobileMe was introduced) with our existing Apple ID we have used for purchases. I have not seem any successful work-around to date.

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