Convert iPad from one Apple ID to Another

Boulder,

The cleanest way is for her to do a wipe, and then transfer it to you as a new clean iPad. See procedure in here:

What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

Re: “… i take this to mean, in this case, texts resident in my wife's device …”

Understand that iCloud data is not “just” a remote network drive; rather sync’d iCloud data is resident ON each and every connected device. (This is so you have access to the data when not online).

The “sync” function keeps all of this data — resident on your multiple devices — identical.

When you signed-out your wife, it left “Orphaned Data” on the device.

Normally, at this point the device should have been erased, removing the orphaned data. (This erasure would NOT have impacted your wife’s account because the device — being signed-out — was no longer connected to her Apple Account)

Next you signed-in to the device as YOU. Two things happened.

• All of your iCloud data flowed into the device
• All of the “orphaned data” — now effectively “adopted by you” — flowed into your iCloud

Finally, all of the “newly adopted” data on your iCloud flowed into all of your other devices.

So now, ALL the iCloud data originally from both accounts is now entangled-together as YOUR data.

Unfortunately, ed2345’s linked article is exactly what should have been done beforehand …

… but it sounds perhaps too late for you; the “merge” of all of the “still on-device” account data into YOUR account has already occurred. 😕

I suspect that manually “cleaning-up” your account is your best and certainly safest way forward.

Restoring from a “prior backup” could possibly be a partial option, but even that would not disentangle all the data which is now sync’d into your iCloud.

That’s the “downside” of iCloud sync.

“A change anywhere - even if inadvertent - replicates EVERYWHERE”

I’d urge caution moving forward.

Now that things are sync’d a mass removal on any device could be catastrophic.

A manual deletion — while no doubt time-consuming and tedious — is certainly the safest method. (At least the deletions would sync too)

Because the data remained on the iPad after she was signed-out of that iPad.

It was therefore no longer being “sync’d” to ANY Apple Account.

As it was no longer “connected” to her Apple Account, I’m terming it “orphaned data.”

(A term I just “made up” for this explanation)

1. will that delete her texts on my other devices? - Should
2. will they re-appear in subsequent icloud syncs? - Should NOT