Has anyone who cancelled MobileMe been able to reuse their ID for iCloud Mail/Notes?

[JoelMarcey]

I thought I saw somewhere on here that some people had success in doing the following setup:

1. Cancel MobileMe
2. Use a non-MobileMe email address (e.g. @gmail.com) for their primary iCloud setup.
3. For iCloud Mail and Notes, they were able to use their cancelled MobileMe ID when asked to create a new @me.com address. In other words, their cancelled MobileMe ID was totally deleted and thrown back into the "available to use as a new ID" pile.

I cancelled MobileMe 3 days ago, and it still says my ID is still taken with the message:

"Email Taken: This email address is already taken. Try picking a new one".

I was sure I saw messages in a thread on here saying that some were successful in using their old MobileMe ID as if it were new.

 

[Mal]

Should've just used your MobileMe as your iCloud ID, it was still active.

jW

 

[JoelMarcey]

Should've just used your MobileMe as your iCloud ID, it was still active.

jW

I thought about that. But I wanted to move to one master ID, and I figured that this was the best time to do it. My gmail account is way more utilized than my now former MobileMe account, so I went with that.

I made some assumptions:

1. Apple is going to allow us to utilize former MobileMe IDs for use in current iCloud accounts sometime down the road for Mail and Notes
2. If (1) doesn't happen, the worst case scenario is that I have to create a new MobileMe ID and my old one just sits stale on the Apple ether.

But, I thought I saw on here that some people cancelled MobileMe and their ID was available for use again. I just wanted to see verify if I saw that correctly.

 

[DarkRyan323i]

Same thing happened to me. I called Apple support today and they pretty much said there's nothing they could do. We were supposed to use our @me email addresses when setting up iCloud (even though we both cancelled our MobileMe accounts). It asked for the Apple ID in iCloud, I always thought the MobileMe ID was something different. I don't see why they can't delete my MobileMe account so I can reuse my @me email address. The guy on the phone just said to create a new one.

If you try to sign out of iCloud (to sign back in with the MobileMe address) it says it will delete your calendars so by the time you would do that on each device you'd lose everything. Looks like we are SOL on this.

 

[pulp88]

It cannot be done (I think):

If you cancel your mobileme name@me.com account (thus appleID) and its possible aliasses they can never be used again to create a new account/appleID. Otherwise someody else would be able to grab the name@me.com and would potentially receive email that was ment for you.

Only with the transition fom .mac to .me back in 2008?,, .mac membernames that where inactive during the transition where reuseable by others as and only .me membernames.

Apple could technically do what you want but....Don't think support is able to.

 

[DarkRyan323i]

Solution!

Ok this worked for me:

1. Export all calendars out of iCal to your desktop
2. Sign out of iCloud
3. When asked about iCloud contacts, click "Keep Contacts"
4. When asked about iCloud calendars and reminders, click "Delete from Mac"
5. When asked about Documents & Data, click "Delete from Mac" (I wasn't storing documents in the Cloud but if you are, backup accordingly beforehand)
6. Sign into iCloud using your @me address
7. Check "Mail & Notes". Mail will now be set up with your original @me address!
8. Open iCal
9. Double click on all exported calendars (.ics files from step 1) to add your calendar data back to iCloud.

I did these steps first on my iMac then followed with my other devices. On additional devices you won't have to backup your calendars since they will be back in iCloud after setting up your first device. The only issue I saw was that birthdays were doubled up on my MacBook Pro. I just went into preferences and unchecked then rechecked "Show Birthdays calendar" and that fixed it. Hope this will work for anyone else who had this problem. Good luck!

If you had MobileMe previously, I don't think you can use a non @me Apple ID in iCloud if you want to keep your original @me address. Kind of weird having two Apple IDs but at least I got my @me address back.

From the Apple support page: "If you have a MobileMe account (you have an email that ends in @me.com or @mac.com), you should enter your MobileMe email address when prompted for your Apple ID. This will set up MobileMe mail, contacts, calendar, and bookmarks on your device. This is also an important step for moving your MobileMe account to iCloud".
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4895

 

[JoelMarcey]

Ok this worked for me:

1. Export all calendars out of iCal to your desktop
2. Sign out of iCloud
3. When asked about iCloud contacts, click "Keep Contacts"
4. When asked about iCloud calendars and reminders, click "Delete from Mac"
5. When asked about Documents & Data, click "Delete from Mac" (I wasn't storing documents in the Cloud but if you are, backup accordingly beforehand)
6. Sign into iCloud using your @me address
7. Check "Mail & Notes". Mail will now be set up with your original @me address!
8. Open iCal
9. Double click on all exported calendars (.ics files from step 1) to add your calendar data back to iCloud.

I did these steps first on my iMac then followed with my other devices. On additional devices you won't have to backup your calendars since they will be back in iCloud after setting up your first device. The only issue I saw was that birthdays were doubled up on my MacBook Pro. I just went into preferences and unchecked then rechecked "Show Birthdays calendar" and that fixed it. Hope this will work for anyone else who had this problem. Good luck!

If you had MobileMe previously, I don't think you can use a non @me Apple ID in iCloud if you want to keep your original @me address. Kind of weird having two Apple IDs but at least I got my @me address back.

From the Apple support page: "If you have a MobileMe account (you have an email that ends in @me.com or @mac.com), you should enter your MobileMe email address when prompted for your Apple ID. This will set up MobileMe mail, contacts, calendar, and bookmarks on your device. This is also an important step for moving your MobileMe account to iCloud".
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4895

Thanks for the writeup.

So you have your @me.com address as your primary iCloud ID and I imagine you had to go into the iTunes store on your iOS devices and use your other email address for purchases. I thought about doing this initially, but I wanted to only maintain one email address. To me, I think the ability to only have one email address for iCloud outweighs the possibility that I might lose my original @me.com email address and would have to create a new one.

 

[DarkRyan323i]

Yes I have my @me address for iCloud and Gmail for iTunes and Apple store purchases. If you want one email for everything I think you can change your Apple ID to the @me address for purchases and iTunes. I'll probably just leave mine as the Gmail address for now. Like you I just wanted to make sure I didn't lose my original @me address.

 

[DarkRyan323i]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Scratch that. I was reading another thread and I guess you can't have an @me address as your Apple ID.

 

[3speedist]

Maybe there is hope...

I have a similar scenario:

- I use a gmail account as my primary email and I use that address for my AppleID.

- Signed up for MobileMe trial in March 2011 (in anticipation of iCloud becoming available and wanting to grab desired account name).

- Allowed it to expire in June 2011.

- When iCloud came online I signed in using AppleID (gmail)

- When I attempted to turn on Mail & Notes in System Preferences I typed in expired MobileMe address - Got "This email address is already taken. Try picking a new one."

- Well, I'm a persnickety brat. I want the one I let expire!

- Tried to sign in to old MobileMe account.

- Got message pop-up above user name: "Your MobileMe subscription has expired and cannot be renewed. This Apple ID can still be used for other Apple services. <link>Learn More."

- Just today I stopped getting that message and now I am brought to my MobileMe account page with a pop-up stating the same "Your MobileMe subscription has expired and cannot be renewed". The pop-up presents the option to "Logout" or "Learn More"

- I clicked on learn more and was brought to an FAQ pop-up page regarding MobileMe to iCloud transition.

- Scrolled down to "Can I keep my MobileMe email address once I move to iCloud?"

- Clicked on the link www.me.com/move.

- This brought me to a very promising looking iCloud transition page for my expired account.

- Went through an iCloud setup wizard...

- It seems to work up until I agree to Terms of Service and click the "Move to iCloud" button.

- I see a quick flash of a progress bar... then...

- "Please try again later. Due to high demand, we are unable to move your account at this time. You can continue to use MobileMe.


This all seems very promising. The behavior of the MobileMe sign-in seems to have changed in favor of accepting expired accounts. But I am prepared to learn that I am hitting a brick wall.

We'll see. Good luck