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Since approximately 2009, my mother, brother, and I have all shared the same Apple ID and therefore, iCloud. Each of us have our separate devices, computers, and different music, apps, contacts, and other data on them. It's been really messy and generally a pain to try and make our stuff separate when we share the same cloud and everything. Now my brother and I want to get our own separate accounts, but we don't want to have to repurchase over 500 songs and 170+ apps, move around thousands of pictures, reenter our contacts, etc, etc...

Is there any way we can transfer our individual data to a new iCloud account on our respective devices? I feel it should be as simple as signing into the device with one Apple ID, downloading what I want, and then signing back in with my new Apple ID where everything will download. But knowing Apple and my luck with technology it probably won't be that simple.

Thanks for any help.

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  • thank you so much everybody! i completely forgot about Family Sharing.
    – Nicole
    Aug 5, 2015 at 15:14

3 Answers 3

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You can create individual iCloud IDs and keep the old ID as store ID, common for every user. That way you won't have to purchase everything again and still the data within your apps will remain different as your iCloud IDs are different.

Optionally, you can just create two more IDs and use family sharing with the first ID to share all your purchased content.

To transfer your data like contacts, notes etc. configure the old iCloud ID on a new device and when everything is synced just delete the iCloud ID. It should ask if you want to delete all your data from the device. Select "No". Then configure your new iCloud ID from iCloud settings and now it will ask if you want to "merge" all data.

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In this situation, you can try to backup your data to iTunes. First, log in your own Apple ID on your own Apple devices.Next, connect your devices to computer, launch iTunes. And then restore your own backup. Finally, log in your own iCloud account on your Apple devices and use iCloud to backup your data. Now you have transferred your individual data to a new iCloud account on your respective devices.

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If you each set up separate accounts, then all join Family Sharing, this would allow you to each re-download any app, song, movie, book etc purchased by the 'family'.

Your individual Contacts details, Calendar, progress in games etc would all be lost in this transition, except for the Family Organiser, who would still have access to the original data.

Moving this data would have to be done manually. I'm afraid Apple IDs were never meant to be shared in this way until the advent of Family Sharing & there is no easy path for migration of individual data from account to account.

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