Getting support for a problem of two accounts and defunct email

If you want help from us (the people here are everyday users of Apple equipment like yourself but with a lot of experience, flexibility is proposing solutions, and patience) then we need more of a description of the issues.

If you want help from Apple itself:

Refer to this page for Apple Support features ➔ Contact - Official Apple Support

Select from the presented options until you find a solution for your issue, or see if there is a chat or phone call contact method offered lower on the page under “Get more help” (you sometimes have to narrow down the options multiple times before this is shown). If you do not see your issue, keep experimenting with any series of selections until you reach one that offers a chat session or a telephone call and get the representative to redirect you.

For chat help with a USA Apple Account —>

https://getsupport.apple.com/?caller=kbase&PGF=PGF63005&category_id=SC0998&symptom_id=20198

This support article has various country telephone numbers for contacting Apple for support and service ➔ Contact Apple Support - Apple Support For some countries look under “Other” listing at the end of the list. Not every country has telephone support, and phone numbers may only work when calling from the same country.

Apple has a new service: Purchases can be migrated from a secondary to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them. (This feature isn’t available to users in India.) —> Migrate purchases from one Apple Account to another Apple Account - Apple Support and what purchases can be migrated --> About migrating Apple Account purchases between accounts - Apple Support

If all you want to do is get the purchases from one account to another the above may be what you need. An alternative would be to set up Family Sharing with yourself: How to set up Family Sharing on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac - Apple Support

The support article Change your Apple Account primary email address - Apple Support outlines various methods for changing the email address (Apple ID) you use for your Apple Account while retaining everything in your account. Use the online method and you don't have to sign in our out of anything. You would only have to do that anyway if you are using a mobile device. You could use a computer with two user accounts, each signed into a separate Apple Account.

This is a long post so I'll make a new reply. If you want to combine everything (almost) in two accounts:

Apple has no formal entire account merging or transferring process. The things below will help you in doing ongoing or one-time transfer of as much as possible from one account to the other. In February, 2025 Apple started allowing purchases to be migrated to a different account. This is not available in all countries. If you do wish to migrate purchases, Apple has several lengthy and detailed articles about doing this, including limitations:

- Purchases can be migrated from a secondary to a primary Apple Account to consolidate them. (This feature isn’t available to users in India.) —> Migrate purchases from one Apple Account to another Apple Account - Apple Support

- Learn about what purchases and associated content can be migrated between two accounts. —> About migrating Apple Account purchases between accounts - Apple Support

If you cannot migrate your purchases, look into using Family Sharing to continue to be able to use items purchased with one Apple account with other Apple accounts, and for some data sharing features.

- Family Sharing - How Family Sharing works - Apple Support

- Set up Family Sharing - How to set up Family Sharing on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac - Apple Support

You can use various iCloud sharing features for some ongoing data sharing.

Share folders with iCloud Drive --> Share files and folders in iCloud Drive on iCloud.com - Apple Support

Read How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Vision Pro - Apple Support about how to share photos.

Sharing music playlists —> How to share an Apple Music playlist on your iPhone - Apple Support

While Apple’s purchase migration documents say you cannot transfer iCloud data, you can probably still do that as a separate process. The next section may sound tricky but it lets you merge some things on a device where you have already signed in with an old account but want to use a new account and incorporate data that is already on the device from the old account. Incidentally, the data will then propagate to other devices using iCloud with that new account. (I haven't tried this with a computer but it may also work with a computer account signed into an old account.)

If you have signed into the first Apple account on a mobile device (but maybe also on a computer?) then fortunately when you sign out of that account it asks you if you wish to retain the data from the old account on your device (toggle the ones you want to on). If you keep data on the device then when you sign in with the other account it will merge this data with the account signing into the device. You can later delete individual items from the old account that you do not want. Similar information can be found in this post: I have 2 apple IDs i want to merge them h… - Apple Community , and a step-by-step in this User Tip: How to “unshare” an Apple ID - Apple Community . Note that only content physically present on the device such as contacts, photos and videos will be retained. Meta data such as a game play scores that are tied to a specific account or are only on a vendor's Apple Account-specific database remotely will not be retained. Also turn off storage optimization before doing this. With Optimize Storage, smaller, space-saving photos and videos are kept on your device while all of your original, full-resolution versions are stored in iCloud. Make sure photo optimization is turned off so the full quality versions from the old account are actually on the device before merging the content into your new account. Manage your photo and video storage - Apple Support You can turn optimization back on again once you are fully using your new account on the device.

It used to be that apps would remain on a device and would work for a while, you would not be able to update them or redownload them unless you bought them again with the new account or download them with the new account using Family Sharing. If you use purchase migration feature this may help with this now.

Sign out of iCloud on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, or Mac --> https://support.apple.com/HT208242

If this involves a device changing ownership, the person should also change the ID set in Find My. https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/remove-devices-and-items-from-find-my-mmdc23b125f6/icloud

If another Apple account is signed in you may need to enter the password for that account to sign out of that account first.

Click on this link to learn how to 'Sign in with your Apple ID' --> https://support.apple.com/HT204053

Thank you for this. Having had several attempts at trying to describe the problem directly to Apple in the limited word count I thought I would keep it short here. But I'm happy to be able to explain the issue. I have been an Apple user for a while, and somehow sometime ago acquired two Apple IDs. One of them is associated with my primary iTunes account and with a large quantity of music that has been uploaded. That has an email address that is now defunct. So the first thing I want to do is change that email address but it is the primary email address and I'm running into roadblock and changing it. I will say more below.

Second ID deals with all the normal day-to-day activity across all of my devices. It is therefore the one that I am signed into on those devices. There is also some music purchases associated with this and ideally I would like to merge all of my music. This one is also connected to the App Store.

It appears that I can't change or replace the primary ID email without validating it on another device which is signed into a different ID. I am concerned about signing out of that ID because of questions about the data that it asks.

So the two questions that I have are:

1) How do I change the primary ID while keeping the integrity of all of the data managed by a different ID?

2) Is there a way to merge the iTunes/music account?

In general I can't see any value in maintaining two IDs. But when I tried to deal with this years ago I ran into a problem.

It is incredibly kind of you to go to so much trouble. Appreciated. The world is still a good place. I have read it but done nothing yet, will properly digest and navigate a path. Thanks!