This Mac can’t connect to iCloud because of a problem with

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Move the following to the Trash and restart.

Close all running apps. Put the following items in the trash:

1) In the ~/Library/ folder, put the Caches folder in the trash.

2) In the ~/Library/Application Support/ folder, put the folder iCloud in the trash.

3) In the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder, put the file MobileMeAccounts.plist in the trash.

Learned from Kurt Lang

You are welcome.

Hi Eric

I am experiencing the same problem as amawakeing but unfortunately your instruction do not work for me. I bought a new Macbook Pro 13" Retina just before Christmas and upgraded to El Capitan immediately (mine must have been some old stock ...) and the problem started almost immediately. After login I get the message "This Mac can’t connect to iCloud because of a problem with - my email account". I then go to system preferences > iCloud and put my password in the pop up window. After this the 'Account details' button, on the left hand side of the iCloud pop up, becomes active for a second or two and also to tick boxes for the iCloud features go blue. But then the buttons are greyed out again.

This means that each time I sent an email I get a pop-up asking me to login the iCloud which is very annoying.

I have had a string of senior Apple care advisors and have upgraded OS, replaced OS and did a clean install but without any result. I assume there as gremlin somewhere in my user profile. If I setup a new account using the same iCloud account there's no problem. So I have been tempted to just transfer all my stuff to this new account but as I have several hundred email directories that I would have to transfer and rebuild individually it is too much of a waste of my time. I have not been able to find an easier way of transferring a Mail directory tree and emails.

Your expert advice would be very much appreciated!

Thanks

Benimora

Have you tried deleting the e-mail account in System Preferences/Internet accounts and adding it back?

Thanks for your advice. Just tried this - deleted the email account; restarted and iCloud was still playing up before I added the email account back.

I managed to sort it! Somehow in my enthusiasm of returning to Apple after 20 years in PC wilderness I managed to setup two iCloud accounts - both relating to the same Mac. All I did was delete one iCloud account > restart > setup other iCloud account and everything is fine. I still don't fully understand why the problem occurred as both iCloud accounts seem fully functional and there was never an error message suggesting that the Mac already related to one iCloud account. Anyway I am delighted and again thanks for your advice!

Benimora, Eric

I came upon this thread as I have run into exactly the same symptoms as you Benimora, and I seem to have got there in the same way:

- I recently migrated an old Macbook (Snow Leopard) to a new El Capitan Macbook, via a full Time machine backup

- Somehow the process created 2 accounts (in the same name) on the new Macbook

- I was experiencing exactly the problems you described on Account A; I tried the steps suggested by Eric in the post above, but they did not fix the issue\

- I then realised that Account B was logged into my iCloud account. I deleted Account B, restarted and returned to Account A

However the problem is still occurring on Account A, just as you describe Benimora

- I go into System Preferences, select iCloud

- login and for a couple of seconds it looks like I'm in and all good

- then the buttons all grey out and I've been kicked out. No prompts or error messages.

I am wondering if this is because I did not select the option to completely delete account B, but keep a copy of it in Deleted Items (IIRC ... or similar)??

Anyway I'm at a loss now. Any help on what to try next would be immensely appreciated. From your posts above I'm sure I'm very close to the solution but I just can't figure it out !!!!

Thanks in advance ..... cjexpat (UK)

I got this problem and tried this. It then seemed to work, but didn't download email I knew was there (because I sent it as a test). Opened Mail again and the problem is back. This is useless and completely inadequate. Time to move completely over to Google's products (at least they work). I found another thread on this problem which talked about editing passwords in the Keychain, but I have several with similar complicated names, so I can't tell which one to change, so won't try that. Looks like I'll just have to tell everyone to use my Gmail account and move over to that. This isn't the first time this type of problem has happened, but usually in association with one of the so-called OS upgrades.