"An error occurred during activation. Try again." Trying to sync mac and phone messages

Should you end up trying all the steps and it still not resolve the issue, go into activity monitor and locate the process called "identityservicesd" and force kill this process. Do this once you have opened imessage and gotten the error. After killing the process it should start working again

Call Apple and DEMAND to know if the geniuses running their servers have locked-out your devices. My wife had this ridiculously useless error "An error occurred during activation. Try again." on every device, except her iPhone. It turns out that Apple -surreptitiously and without any explanation explanation- blocked her devices from connecting. Oh, her Apple ID worked fine for their unwanted iCloud, but Messages and FaceTime would throw everything into chaos and refuse to connect with any real/meaningful (they sure can spam the Apple ID email with every other thing, why not to report an issue that requires a call to Apple). It's not enough to pay top $$$ for their stuff, but to lock people out of their Apple ID (logging-into iCloud still works b/c they want it to, but not on actual devices where Y-O-U want it to work) without any notice and with a stupid error that is meaningless (as per this and many articles like it) is tortious interference, plain and simple.


We wiped her iPad and MacBook Pro over and over for naught. I could get one of them connected to Messages, but then trying the other would throw them both in limbo again. In every instance, FaceTime on her laptop would accept the login but then ask about something in the keychain and pop back to the login screen without explanation (credentials were unflinchingly correct). Doing that would then ruin her access to FaceTime and Messages on the iPad, but the iPhone was always good. After a full work day on the phone with a tech support agent who berated me (she was getting paid to hear my complaints, I was wasting time and money well beyond the call, which itself was too long), and then waiting almost 4 more days (2 "business days" so the weekend did not count), some higher support group simply unlocked her devices and they've been good to go since. Of course, when I asked W-T-F they did this, she outright refused to give any explanation. So, all that wasted time and energy, just b/c a bunch of moronic Hollywood twits lost their nude pics to hackers b/c they used brilliant passwords like 12345, so now we plebs get to pay for it?! Seriously, Apple. The pendulum has swung waaaaaay too far into the ludicrous zone...


So, save your time troubleshooting - first call Apple and ask if their lordships have deemed you not good enough to access your own dang Apple ID on your own dang devices, and see if they secretly cut you off without any good reason or any compensation, lest you waste all the time and effort we did.


I can't imagine how anyone with less technical savvy would get out of the mess Apple makes. Apple has totally abandoned the "it just works" mantra and even the simple (grand)mother rule in their testing and (morally and logically) bankrupt development decision-making.

Did you try the suggestions here for the issue on the Mac?

If you can't sign in to your iMessage account or FaceTime on your Mac - Apple Support

Same problem, I did everything your link suggested, nothing is helping. I've run into this problem once before, and it just started working one day.

I'm signed into iCloud on my Mac, OS is up-to-date, I've deleted all imessage prefs I could find, I've removed my Mac's id from id.apple.com.. I'm at a loss.

I know there are a lot of threads with this same topic, but this is an ongoing issue for a lot of people. Any help would be appreciated!

Patrick

This is a follow-up to my post a few minutes ago. I decided to go through all the steps again, and realized my OS was on 10.12.3, not 10.12.5. Once I updated, iMessage took a bit to start working, but it did log in successfully. What a headache, but at least it's working now.

Thanks for the reply. Ironically, it stopped working the next day after my last post, and hasn't worked since.

I tried what WilliamC0831 suggested. It did let me log in, but I am unable to send messages to anyone.

I've had the same problem since beginning of May.

I have read every thread post from others who had the same issue and nothing has fixed it!

One thread said they called Apple and Apple got them to send some files and after a few days it just worked (never heard back from Apple though). I can't find the thread anymore; read it in May.

I haven't tried calling.

After trying every suggested fix, I too still couldn't get in. Called apple support and I had a block on my account, the rep unblocked me and boom, I was back in! I asked what happened and she said that they have seen spammers using random apple id's and my account may have been blocked and she told me to just monitor my account over the next few days.

😎For anyone who is struggling with this .

I don't know if this gonna work with you or not , But here is how i really fixed this after almost a day trying everything from internet 😠

1 / Open KeyChain App (in LaunchPad )

2 / Search your account Name ( the one that you use to login into facetime)

3/ Delete everything in the filtered list (becareful to skip the one that you don't know , i recommand you tried to login using facetime or imessage first , then every keys that has the "date modified" field match your current time will related to Facetime or Imessage ) . These should be deleted

4/ Reopen Facetime or iMessage and login . (Deleted keys will be automatically generated)

5/ Enjoy

---

Let me know if this works for you ,

Feel free to ask me if you don't really understand my instruction

Hope this help , God Bless🙂

@beboz1

Open the Applications folder, then Utilities folder, and launch Activity Monitor.

Sort by "Process name" and then find and select the process ("identityservicesd", as per William).

Click the button with an "X" in an octagon and then the "Force Quit" button.

If this doesn't work, then call Apple and demand that they remove you from their secret block list(s), which seems to be the most common -and most insidious- issue causing this maddening problem.

BLESS YOUR HEART! I have bene struggling with this for nearly two months and have tried thing after thing that I see suggested in forums/threads and this is the one thing to finally work. THANK YOU!

Me 2

Thank You! This is the only thing that worked.

Hello William >>> please explain how can i go into activity monitor ? i cant understand this step

This