Republished: How To Transfer, Merge and Copy Data From One iCloud/MobileMe Account To Another
by Ammaar Reshi
October 12, 2011
Note: This article originally appeared on AppAdvice on August 22. We believe you could need it again today.
If you have multiple MobileMe or iCloud accounts managing them can be come quite a headache if they contain a lot of data. To avoid this crisis you can copy data from one account to the other, eliminate unnecessary accounts and practically merge all your data. This tutorial shows you how to do exactly that; whether you've got multiple iCloud or MobileMe accounts, you may want to transfer data from one to the other without managing all of them at once. Follow the steps below to get started:
What Devices Does This Work On?
- iPad 1, 2
- iPhone 3GS, 4
- iPod touch third generation, fourth generation
- Two or more MobileMe/iCloud accounts
- Step 1: Go to the Settings app > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account...
- Step 2: Enter the details of your MobileMe or iCloud account.
- Step 3: Select the data you would like transferred. For example, it could be Calendars, Mail, Contacts etc.
- Step 4: Hit save.
- Step 5: You can optionally return to Mail, Contacts, Calendar settings in order to grab older data. Do this by scrolling to the bottom and tweaking the "Sync" setting for either Calendars or Reminders. For example, from "1 Month Back" to "All Events".
- Step 6: Now navigate to each app that has data you wanted transferred. For example, I had checked Contacts and Calendar in Step 3 so I will launch both apps one by one.
- Step 7: Wait for the synchronization to take place, the small circle in the status bar will indicate data transfer. Once complete, verify your data is there.
- Step 8: Now navigate back to Settings app > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Go to the account you just added and if you want to delete the account, scroll to the bottom and hit delete.
- Step 9: Select "Keep on My iPhone" and proceed with deleting the account.
- Step 10: Now repeat Step 1 and add the account you would like to transfer the old data to. Once added, relaunch all the apps you pulled the data from in order to transfer the data to the newly added account.