Recover discontinued Apple ID for iPhone

It's hard to tell from your description which scenario is taking place.

One possibility is this was a personal Apple Account using a university email address. If the university later discontinued the email address (this happened to me) then she needed to have changed her address to an existing account with somebody else, as outlined in: Change your Apple Account primary email address - Apple Support

If the university email address no longer exists then investigate account recovery here --> If you forgot your password and can’t sign in to your Apple Account - Apple Support Failing that, contact Apple -->

This support page has information about contacting Apple support and service ➔ Contact Apple Support - Apple Support If live support options (chat and/or telephone) are available they will show near the bottom left.

- Telephone numbers may only work when calling from the same country.

- Chat options (telephone numbers appear as active links, not plain text) may depend upon cellular connectivity. If a number shows as an active link, click on it to see additional options.

- If chat is not available on the top level support page, try selecting your hardware and narrow down your issue to see if a support article offers a support link offering chat. For example, the contact support link on this page Check your Apple Account balance - Apple Support offers a chat link about emptying account balance even on a computer where the top level page does not offer any chat.

With an iPhone, iPad, or Vision, you may be able to chat using the Apple Support App if it is available in your country —> https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-support/id1130498044

The other possibility is the university issued a dedicated managed account through Apple School Manager. In this case the account was never truly hers and administration was purely though the institution. If she had data with them then she would have to work through the institution's IT department.

Define "discontinued her Apple Account". What exactly did they do?

The university should have no real control ver her Apple Account directly. They can of course cancel her univeristy email address, and if she used this as her Apple Account she would need to change it, but the Apple Account itself should not have suffered any ill effects by this. It should continue to work just fine and be accessible if she knows her password for it. The Apple Account password and the email address password do not need to be the same one and are not also not related or connected in any way.

Basically, if the university only did something to her email address the Apple Account is not really affected directly.

If the university did something specific to her Apple Account, then you need to explain exactly what that was. Otherwise, it's impossible to provide any help or suggestions for how to proceed.

wjp937 wrote:

The message we get when attempting to reset her password is "This Apple Account is not valid or not supported."

Hi again,

The message suggests the email address bieng typed to initiate the reset is incorrect, or the account has been locked or deleted by Apple. Make sure the email address is correctly typed and also make sure it was not actually changed to a different one at any point. It may be the account email address has already been changed to a different email address that is unrelated with the university.

If the University made the Apple account and as such had full control over it, they may have requested Apple delete the account entirely, in which case it usually not possible to re-instate it. However, if they did not have direct control over the account, they would be unable to request its deletion.

You will need to contact Apple Support and see if they can recover it, but usually for deleteld account sit is not possible.

You cna use Apple's Support website: https://getsupport.apple.com , enter your issue in the field, works through the prompts and at the end further down the page there should be a button labeled "More Support Options" with Chat and / or Call options inside if avaialble for the issue.

You can also use the phone numbers in the follwing link to contact Apple Support directly.

click here ➜ Contact Apple Support - Apple Support

Phil0124,

Thanks for your response.

The problem is I am not sure what the IT department did.

Her email address is unchanged and functioning.

Do you know if I can contact Apple Support by phone, with her, to reinstate her acount?

I know I have accessed her Apple account with her password in the past.

The University provided an iPhone, paid for the AT&T account, and the IT department provided support, including configuring her Apple Account and password. A couple of years later, the University stopped paying for the account and transferred the responsibility to each individual staff member. I have helped her with technology issues for several years. All of the above was pre-COVID. Since then, University attendance has declined sharply, and numerous support staff have left.

I appreciate your frustration, but the answers don't seem to exist on that end. The message we get when attempting to reset her password is "This Apple Account is not valid or not supported."

I understand that the identication of the name of the Apple account is actually a separate funtion and should not be effected.

I will be with her again on Saturday afternoon to sync her watch and IPad. I hope I can uncover more information at that time.