I cannot setup my icloud mail on device; it says my icloud email address is already used, but its mine

Question

I already had a me.com email address from Apple.  They notified me that I have the same address at icloud.com.  However, when I go to see it up on my iPhone 4, it is rejected saying that my icloud.com address is already in use.  So how can I set up my phone and then my icloud web mail account.  It won't work unless I have icloud mail set up on my iPhone.   Thanks.   - Samuel

Answer 1

Hi Eric, Thanks for your reply.  Unfortunately that didn't work in the past or present.  There is some back story and things are not straightforward because of increased complexity in the computing world, my lack of understanding and time to be aware for a year or two and a laptop that turned out to be a lemon: bought two macbook laptops in 2007/8 (one had to have a new harddrive months after it was bought) along with mac.com addresses for me and my children.  I didn't use mine but they used theirs. I continued to use hotmail which a patient person at apple - through some complex manouvering - was able to get it read in apple mail and calendar (but which may have turned out to create some of the problems).  Then there was mobile me and me.com, a failed attempt to sync computers, and a lack of awareness on my part that the computing world had become more complex and remembering passwords, usernames, accounts, etc. was important and keeping the mobile me addresses sorted.  Somewhere in this soup, something became tangled.  I don't know what.  My iphone and apple id is hotmail right now - not icloud or me.com. I just bought a new macbook pro for myself only and iphone because it was time but also hoping to untangle the mess.  Thought it would be easy to sync the two up through icloud!  Any thoughts?  Or am I condemned to find a new email name for icloud?