My new iPad has the wrong iCloud account (restored an old backup from previous iPad). It's pointing to an account that no longer exists and now I can't delete it because I can't log into it. Find my iPhone wants me to log in before deleting the account.

Question

I have an old iPad2, and received a new iPad Air. When I set up the iPad Air, I started as a backup from the iPad2, instead of treating it as a new iPad setup. It also asked if I wanted to set up Find My iPhone and I said yes. Problem is that I also (previously) changed the primary email address on my iCloud account, but never changed the iCloud setup on my iPad. So now the iPad Air has iCloud pointing to the email address as the account name. I want to just delete this account and enter the new email, but Find My iPhone won't let me - it asks for my password first. Problem is, it won't accept the correct password because the primary email has changed.

Answer 1

If the old ID is yours, and if your current ID was created by editing the details of this old ID (rather than being an entirely new ID), go to https://appleid.apple.com, click Manage my Apple ID and sign in with your current iCloud ID.  Click edit next to the primary email account, change it back to your old email address and save the change.  Then edit the name of the account to change it back to your old email address.  You can now use your current password to turn off Find My iDevice, even though it prompts you for the password for your old account ID. Then save any photo stream photos that you wish to keep to your camera roll.  When finished go to Settings>iCloud, tap Delete Account and choose Delete from My iDevice when prompted (your iCloud data will still be in iCloud).  Next, go back to https://appleid.apple.com and change your primary email address and iCloud ID name back to the way it was.  Now you can go to Settings>iCloud and sign in with your current iCloud ID and password.