Jen Niles wrote:
Then I came to a screen which stopped me in my tracks. I am so scared to mess this up! It says "Keep a copy of your data on this iPad?" Who is the "your" they are talking about? If they are still talking about me (because I am the person signing out), then no, I don't want to keep a copy of MY data on my son's iPad. >>>But my son has always been creating and existing as me<<< on this iPad, know what I mean? If I erase MY stuff, am I not really erasing HIS too?
The "your" is in fact referring to you as in the owner of the Apple ID that is being signed out of.
If your son has been adding data to your iCloud, like syncing contacts, or photos etc... its best to keep the data on the iPad instead of summarily deleting it all. That way it can be manually and selectively deleted as required. Once you sign out of iCloud, deleting the data manually from the device will not affect the data in iCloud.
Jen Niles wrote:
It assures me "Data removed from this iPad will still be available in iCloud." (Is it? How would I know?)
When deleting data from the iPad, it does not touch anything in iCloud. That is anything that would be removed from the iPad by this would by definition have a copy in iCloud somewhere that remains untouched. That is a guarantee.
Data stored in iCloud is well whatever you have that gets stored in there from the different Apps that use it.
For instance the Contacts App, can and will store contacts in iCloud. You know they are in iCloud because the contacts belong to the iCloud group inside the contacts App. You can also verify this by logging into the iCloud.com website on a computer and opening the Contacts web App there to see your data.
Same thing applies to other apps that store items in iCloud such as Notes, Calendar, Reminders, and yes iCloud Drive and Photos (if using iCloud Photo Library).
You can also verify what iCloud Drive stores, by opening the Files App on your iPhone or iPad, and vewing the files under iCloud Drive folder.
Jen Niles wrote:
By the way, now that I've decided I can't do this right now, how do I reactivate Find my iPad? As you'll recall I did the first step, which was to put in the password in order to disable Find My iPad, before abandoning the effort. As a result, I received the following email....
If you cancelled the sign out., then to activate Find My iPad just flip the switch next to it in the iCloud section of the Settings App. Settings->Account->iCloud->Find My iPad.
However, there should be no real problem signing out and retaining the data on the iPad.
Once you sign your son into iCloud with his Apple ID, it will ask if you want to merge the existing data on the iPad with his iCloud.
At this point, iCloud is completely separated, and whatever is the manually deleted from his iPad will no longer affect your iCloud or devices.
