TS4097 we have multiple users in our family and multiple devices all sharing one itunes account. i think we are all synced to one icloud account and it is a nightmare....contacts lost, text messags showing up on multiple devises etc. how do we fix this?

Question

We have our family sharing one itunes account.  we have 3 iphones, 2 macbook airs, 2 ipads and 1 mac.  I am not sure how we even got started on the icloud but somehow we did and everything is a mess.  The ipads are showing the text messages, the contacts are all combined, the apps that my duaghter downloads are appearing on all devices.  how do we fix this so contacts are not shared, messages are not shared and apps are not automatically synced to all devises?

Answer 1

You have two different issues going on.  You are getting each other's messages because you are sharing the Same Apple ID for iMessage.  This can be corrected by going to Settings>Messages>Send & Receive on add the devices and doing one of the following:
Either uncheck the email address shown under "You can be reached by iMessage at" on all of your devices; or
If you want to continue to receive iMessages at this email address on one of your devices, on all of the other ones tap the Apple ID at the top, sign out, then sign back in using a different Apple ID (so all devices will be using a different Apple ID for iMessage).  Note: you can continue to share an Apple ID for purchasing from the iTunes and App stores.  It does not need to be the same as the ID you are using for iMessage, FaceTime and other services.
The second issue is that you are sharing the same iCloud account on your devices.  When you do this any data you sync with the shared iCloud account such as contacts is merged and will appear on all devices connected to the account.  To fix this you both need to have separate iCloud accounts (you can continue to share the same Apple ID for purchasing from the iTunes and app stores). 
First decide which device(s) will be keeping the current iCloud account.  On the one(s) that will be changing accounts, if you have any photos in photo stream that in your camera roll or backed up somewhere else that you want to keep on the device(s), save these to the camera roll by opening the photo stream album in the thumbnail view, tapping Edit, then tap all the photos you want to save, tap Share and tap Save to Camera Roll. 
Once this is done, go to Settings>iCloud, scroll to the bottom and tap Delete Account.  (This will only delete the account from this device, not from iCloud.  The device(s) that will be keeping the account will not be effected by this.)  When prompted about what to do with the iCloud data, be sure to select Keep On [iDevice].  Next, set up a new iCloud account using a separate Apple ID (if you don't have one, tap Get a Free Apple ID at the bottom).  Then turn iCloud data syncing for contacts, etc. back to On, and when prompted about merging with iCloud, choose Merge.  This will upload the data to the new account.  Repeat this process for all the devices that you need to migrate to new accounts.
When finished, to un-merge the data in your accounts you will have to go to icloud.com on your computer and sign into each iCloud account separately and manually delete the data you don't want (such as deleting the other person's contacts from your account, and vice versa).