For those of you who already had an Apple ID that doesn’t necessarily be an email address you might be in surprise to see that activating your iCloud service needs an Apple ID that’s an email address. I was a victim of this.

So I went ahead and gave my @gmail.com email address and everything went well. I was even surprised to see that it took my old password that was associated with my non-email Apple ID. The bummer was that iCloud would need to verify your email address before you can start using it. This wouldn’t be an issue with other email providers I guess but with an @gmail.com email address there seem to be some delivery issues. The verification email essentially would never come in.

There is a workaround to get things moving so you can start to make use of iCloud using your @gmail.com email address. The trick is to add a dot to your email address if you don’t have one.

Visit id.apple.com and sign-in to your account with your existing Apple ID. Then on the “Name, ID, email addresses” tab on the left hit the “Edit” link on to the right and give your email a dot decoration (have a dot somewhere on your email address, for example, johnappleseed@gmail.com could be john.appleseed@gmail.com) and save. Hit the “Verify now” link and this time the verification email would come through.

The only compromise is that I now have to use my email with the dot but that’s no big deal given the fact that Gmail delivers all your emails to the original email address even if you decorate your email address with extra dots.

So, that solved my problem and I hope it helps someone who is facing the same issue. Give it a try and share what you find.