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When I click on Manage Family in the iCloud preference pane, I get an error saying

There was an unexpected error
Please try again later.

This error happens after restarting and I've updated my Mac to High Sierra version 10.13.6 in case I just needed to update my software or restart.

What can I do next so I can manage my family sharing account?

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  • macOS Sierra 10.12.6 is operating systerm – Georgana Kennedy Jul 13 '18 at 21:22
  • Have you tried restarting your computer? I've also seen this when the network isn't good. – Ezekiel Elin Jul 13 '18 at 22:55
  • yes I did that twice. – Georgana Kennedy Jul 13 '18 at 23:18
  • You uploaded an image with personal information I have removed the photo and replaced it with an edited version. I have asks the mods to remove the edit history to protect you :) – JBis Jul 14 '18 at 0:54
  • Keep in mind we're not Apple Customer Support. This will need an edit or perhaps a trivial answer saying - here's Apple's Help article saying to try again and then contact support. apple.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/… – bmike♦ Jul 14 '18 at 0:59
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These "try again later" errors can be irritating since it's a failure of the fundamental handshake between your specific Mac and a cloud of sync servers that Apple operates. Sometimes it's just busy, sometimes your network isn't passing SSL/ encrypted traffic correctly, sometimes your account needs to be fixed on the server side.

You don't have to manage this from your Mac - you can go to https://www.icloud.com/#settings and it will show you the steps to manage it from iOS and from Mac so you can try your change and check on your status from iOS.

If you want to work this to a conclusion on the Mac, dpending on how technical you want to get, interacting with Apple Support is a quick way to narrow these things I'll mention below down. They'll go over a couple things to try and then escalate to engineering if needed.

If it were me, I'd try signing out and in from any device on the same network as the computer. This can remove a portion of your synced iCloud data and need to re-sync it up and down, so I don't do that without thinking about how I use iCloud and know I might wait a while for an iCloud photo library to sync.

If you only have the default 5 GB of storage space, I'd sign out from your Mac, then restart and then try signing back in. Support will really dig in when you can't get signed in in the first place as there's really only four things to fix there.

  1. Your computer / network / time are off and need to be fixed
  2. The network isn't set up correctly
  3. Your account status is locked or needs a fix from Apple
  4. You aren't following the steps to get logged in
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