ICloud on MacBookPro not my primary account?

I'm in a mess. Why am I getting this mesage when I click on tyhe iCloud icon in System Preferences? I don't seem to be able to make it my primary account because if I attempt to log out the darn thing wants to remove email, calendars, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all!
In the old fashioned days of Mobile Me, I had by Apple account running perfectly and my wife could sync our calendars etc on her iMac with no problems...
Now, it's all gone awal... I did purchase an iPhone 4 six months ago and I'm wondering if that's become the Primary account.
So how do I go about reversing this without loosing every business contact and appointment I have on my MacBook Pro?

The first iCloud account you enter, in System Preferences>iCloud, is the primary account and will sync calendars etc. You can enter a second account at System Preferences>Mail, Contacts & Calendars to access another account's email but it will not sync your calendars etc. Syncing can take place only to one account.
If you are not signed in to the account you want to use you need to sign out. Before doing this you can uncheck each facility in the list, whereupon you will be asked if you want to save your data on your Mac.
When you sign into a different account syncing will take place from its calendars etc.
Only calendars and contacts listed under 'iCloud' are affected by this. Data under 'On My Mac' is not affected and is not syncing.

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Is there a way to see previous data usage if not the primary account holder?

I am not the primary account and therefore cannot look at bills to see previous usage. Is there anywhere on the website I could find this? I know in the past, I've been able to get the last 3 months (either from website or phone app, I don't remember which), but now Verizon has gone backwards and made it harder to get that information. Perhaps they don't want us to easily find how much is being used so they can bill us for extra overage charges, especially now that data is where their big bucks come from???

Only the primary I believe can. It has always been that way from what I remember.

How do I get my professional account to show to the person receiving my email and not the primary account?

I have 3 email addresses set up on my Mac. I'll label them as A, B and C. A is the primary email that was set up when I first got my Mac. C is my professional account for a company I work for. I recieve messages to that email in my Master inbox. I try to send mail from C, I select that email address out of the 'from' selection box and hit 'send'. The problem is that when I look at the sent message, or when I get a reply from the person I emailed from C, it shows up as an email from A and not C. How do I fix this?

Hi,
In Mail > Preferences > Accounts to can find out which STMP server you are using for outgoing items.
This can be one account.
I do this with a dial Up account I still have access to.
I can "fetch" mail over DSL and now Fibre.
However I have to be Logged in via Dial up to actually use their Servers to Send.
As a Consequence I "send" via one of the other Accounts STMP servers. (I tend to add a signature that reflects this account change)
The other thing that might explain what you are seeing is the Full Name Box.
8:38 PM Monday; April 8, 2013
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.3)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

How do you delete an iCloud email associated with the primary account?

For instance, my @mac.com, me.com, and icloud.com are all the same address. Someone got ahold of my me.com and is spamming me. I want to delete that one but I can't. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

mavenmike wrote:
Oh yes now!
Simply goto appleid.apple.com (sign in) and do it all by yourself.
This is not possible. [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] are all the same thing, and you can't separate them.
The solution is to set up a Rule on the iCloud website redirecting all messages addressed to [email protected] to the Trash or another folder.

I'm unable to get into my Outlook account as FF automatically loads another account which is not the primary account

I had a Hotmail account which MS has moved to an Outlook account. This account has a different username than my firstlastname. However, whenever I open Outlook; Hotmail or Windows Live, FF automatically defaults to [email protected], so that I can't access my real Outlook account. If I can't figure out how to change this default URL, I will have to (gasp!) move back to IE 11 which does let me access this other Outlook account.

First, clear your cookies for outlook.com.
Then restart Firefox and go to outlook.com. Login to the preferred account, and if that is the only outlook that you want to use in the future use the "Remember Me" feature if you are asked.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-cookies-remove-info-websites-stored

TS3988 icloud "primary" account

When I sign into icloud there is a message saying this is not your primary account. I no longer have that "primary" email address.

Go at https://appleid.apple.com and login to verify your account settings. It is possible that your AppleID is different than your iCloud email adress and you can verify this on the AppleID webpage.

HT204053 I started using iCloud on all my Apple products before MobileMe shut down, setting up a new ID and password to do that. When MobileMe moved to iCloud, it became my primary account for iCloud and is interfering with everything I had done before.

I started using iCloud on all my Apple products, using a new password and ID, before MobileMe shut down. Apparently I shouldn't have done that, because when MobileMe moved to iCloud, it automatically became my primary account and took over everything I had previously set up on my iCloud account. I would like to eliminate the MobileMe account, but I can't find a way to do it. Anyone have any experience with this? It's making me very frustrated with iCloud.

The primary account is the one signed into in System Preferences>iCloud (or on an iPhone Settings>iCloud). If it isn't the account you want to use, simply sign out and the sign back in with the required account. On signing out your data will be removed from your Mac but not from the iCloud server.
If you want to you can sign in with the other account in System Preferences>Mail, Contacts & Calendars - you can sync that account's email, contacts and calendars and they will appear alongside the equivalent data in the primary account.
The main differences are that the secondary account's email will not be 'pushed' but will be checked periodically, and the secondary account cannot use PhotoStream.

Photo Stream and non-primary accounts

My wife is not the primary account holder on me.com our family pack is there anyway to get photo stream to work on her phone through iCloud?
If not what are our options.

oh and it does not show up in the 'recent' photo stream on my wifes.
but when you go to events it shows my pics
arrg
Can i uninstall and reinstall?
Can i change the paths?
helllppppp

TS4020 how do 2 people share an iPad if stuff only works for 1 primary account?

Apple recommends that you don't share Apple IDs, so I set up my own. What good does it do me on our iPad if my wife's ID is the primary account? Do I need to buy whatever and set up iCloud from my PC just so I can maybe access stuff when I have the iPad? Thanks.

Welcome to the Apple community.
You can add secondary accounts at settings > mail, contacts and calendars, a secondary account does not have the photo stream feature but otherwise will function with iCloud data just as a primary account does.

"icloud: The maximum number of free accounts have been activated on this iPhone" so I'm going to use my sister's iPhone to activate it

According to what I read here, the iPhone I have has been activated 3 times by different iCloud accounts. My sister has a new iPhone, and I'm thinking about activating my iCloud account on her phone first, then I'll log in on mine. The thing is there is no log out button for iCloud accounts. It says "Delete". We are not sure if she is going to lose all the data she has on her account. What is she going to lose exactly if she deletes it? Will she be able to restore all her data?

Your phone has been used to create three iCloud accounts - the maximum permitted: this is nothing to do with Activation. As you say, you will need to create a new account using another iOS device.
On an iOS device, Settings>iCloud, the 'Delete account' button is badly labelled. It signs the phone out from iCloud; it does not delete the account from the server.
When she signs out using this, all her synced data - contacts, calendars, etc - will disappear from her phone; but they will reappear when she eventually signs back in (give it time for the data to re-sync).

Turn my Sub-Account into Primary Account

Guys,
Looking for some help as i can't get anywhere with online chat and even after speaking to someone over the phone who advised it would be resolved in 24hrs, i got an annoying text that i could not reply to stating it couldn't be done.
Basically a btinternet e-mail address that i have used for years is classed as as Sub-Account. I have been trying to set up BT WIFI but when i use this e-mail address it says that it is not a primary account - i do know the primary e-mail address but since i never use that i would prefer to have just the one.
So i need to turn my Sub-Account into my Primary Account.
I was advised this could be done, gave them all the details, told it would be sorted in 24hrs time. 72hrs later i received a text message "We have tried to contact you but were unsuccessful, unfortunately the e-mail address you have requested is already in use"
Two things here, i've no missed calls or voicemails so i find it hard to believe they tried to call me, secondly i know that the e-mail address is already in use...because it is me that uses it! I just need it set to my primary...
How difficult can this be? Customer Service is really poor, several issues over the past 6months that i end up spending hours explaining a 2minute problem, i guess this is what happens when you offshore service desks and expect people to use basic transcripts to resolve a clear language barrier.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi Bartram1990,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the post. I am sorry to hear your request has not been carried out. This is something that I will be able to do for you.
Please drop me an email. Click on my username (SeanD) and you will find the 'Mods contact link' under the 'About me' section of my profile. Please include your account details and the email address in question. Once I have this info I will be able to sort this out.
Cheers
Sean
BTCare Community Manager
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry that we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)

This is Not Your Primary iCloud Account

When I go to System Preferences -> iCloud, it says "This is not your primary iCloud account." I've seen this problem mentioned here a few times, but no answers, so I'll ask again. What does that mean? I was not aware I had more than one iCould account. The iCloud prefs panel only shows the one account, which is apparently not the primary one. The Details.. button does nothing. The Account Details button just shows the name on the account. How do I find out what my other iCloud account(s) is? Where did this other account even come from? How can I set my primary account so it works on my Mac?
Curiously, in the iCloud Settings on my iPad it says nothing about a primary account, and shows Bookmarks, iCloud storage, etc. all available (not available on my Mac). It shows the same name and email as my Mac does for the account, but no mention of it not being a primary account. Even more curious, I now seem to have 20 GB of storage through 9/30/50!

I had the same notice on my iMac. I checked my iPhone and that is where my primary account is happening. In my iPhone Settings > General > Usage, scroll down to iCloud click on Manage Storage > Change Storage Plan. This is where you will find what your storage is, and what you can purchase to upgrade.

Not your primary iCloud account message.

When I sign into iCloud on my desktop running Lion, I keep getting a message that says 'this is not your primary iCloud account'...
How do I find out what my primary account is, and how do I get it on my desktop?

I found rebooting to be the KEY item in this process. As long as I didn't reboot, it would never complete the process. As soon as the account is deleted from the mail, calendar, and contacts list, reboot, THEN go to the iCloud prefs screen and set things up....it works.

TS3988 incorrect this is not your primary icloud account

In preferences iclod icon shows incorrect primary account. When I select my mail a statement shows this is not your primary icloud account.
I am the primary account holder, I must have done something incorrect whe migrating to icloud.

Go at https://appleid.apple.com and login to verify your account settings. It is possible that your AppleID is different than your iCloud email adress and you can verify this on the AppleID webpage.

Getting "This is not your primary iCloud account" when it is and works on another MacBook

Hello,
I am seeing the following message in my iCloud preference pane:
"This is not your primary iCloud account"
When I know in fact it is my primary and my only account. I have it setup on my iPhone 4 and my work MacBook Pro and it is working correctly with the same account information on both of those.
Anybody else seeing this?

I found rebooting to be the KEY item in this process. As long as I didn't reboot, it would never complete the process. As soon as the account is deleted from the mail, calendar, and contacts list, reboot, THEN go to the iCloud prefs screen and set things up....it works.

ICloud on MacBookPro not my primary account?

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