Public to Organizational Account - problems because of ESRI Global Account?

[BrianHovis]

Hello, I am moving from a Public account to an organizational account.  I received a link with the activation code from ESRI and followed the link to a sign-in webpage.  There are three choices to sign in and use the activation code and I tried them all.  Here are the choices and outcomes:

1.  If a person has already been using ArcGis Online, you are supposed to sign-in with your existing account information, so I used my public account sign-in.  I got the error message attached.

2.  Sign-in as a new user.  I did that and just opened up another Public account.  There was no organizational subscription options.

3.  Use the Global Account.  That also resulted in the error message attached. 

I wonder if the problem is that I registered my public account with my Esri Global Account.  The information below is from the ESRI website ([URL="http://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/reference/register-esri-account.htm"].  Because I registered my AGOL public account with my Esri Global Account, maybe it can be either a public account or organizational account, but not both.  I have content on my AGOL public account that is linked to a website, but if it would help, I might unlink or delete the public account.

FROM ESRI at URL above:  "Registering your Esri Global Account is a separate process from creating an account . Registration is necessary so you can view and agree to the ArcGIS Online terms of use. Once you have agreed to the terms, your Esri Global Account is also your ArcGIS Online organizational account or public account and you can use it to sign into the website. If you create an account from the ArcGIS.com website, it is automatically registered with ArcGIS Online."

Is anyone having the same kind of problem?

[PtomHarner]

I had the same problem when transitioning last year; it was quite the pain and required customer support to straighten out at the time.

[LuciHawkins]

I have two accounts, one public and one organization. I did this because of the fact that the help information for joining an organization states:

The administrator will have either preestablished an ArcGIS account for you to use, elected to allow you to associate an ArcGIS account to use with the organization (for example, by registering an existing account), or invited you to join with your enterprise login. If the administrator later removes your account from the organization, your maps, data, and groups stay with the organization and can be reassigned to other members.  If you joined with an ArcGIS account, your account is removed from the system and you can no longer access it, even if it was one you had established before joining the organization..

That way I will always retain ownership of my "public" account.

Good Reading:

http://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/reference/join-org.htm

Luci

[BrianHovis]

Thanks to you both.  It is comforting to know that I am not the only one to whom has happened and a confirmation that it is all tied up with the way a new organizational account may not be compatible with the way my Public account is configured.  I hope others will find this post and at least know what is happening.  It is frustrating and I have been on the phone off and on with tech services for a couple of days.

[BrianHovis · Accepted solution]

Hello and I finally got to the bottom of it after getting bumped up to a tier 2 support service help.  By the way, thanks to the tech support people for helping.

Anyway, it turns out that it is a bug in the software. When you have a public account and have created content on ArcGis Online, there is corruption of the organizational account when you try the activation code key.  Esri support services needs to make changes to your account.  I am adding part of the support services email below.  This all may be fixed in the short-term.  The analyst told me that the way Esri sets up accounts may be changing soon.

"When you activate a Home-use Entitlement ArcGIS Online organization with a public account (a username/password that provides the free version of ArcGIS Online) that contains any content, the organization activation can become corrupt. It's a total pain, and I'm sorry you have been stuck in the middle of the mess.

It looks like both Home-use subscriptions suffered a corruption so I have requested a new account from Customer Service. With this activation are you able to administer the organization by creating a new username? If you'd like to keep your public account username, please let me know and I can ask our Technical Lead to review the account to see if there is another way to maintain it under the circumstances.

For your records, I have also attached this incident number to the following software bug:

[#NIM102693  Activating a home use entitlement organization with a public account that contains content results in the creation of a corrupt account with no administrators added.]"

[OstapFedyshyn]

Hello, I got a very simillar issue (6 years after [facepalm]). Purchased ArcGIS Desktop Personal License, received an activation link from Esri, followed it and clicked on "Activate Subscription". Tried to sign-in with my existing account info in order to move from Public account to Organizational account. Every time got an error "An error has occurred. Please try again later."

The only difference is that my activation window appears in Chinese, it's quite a pain since I'm not Chinese, I did register my Esri Public Account when I was in Beijing, but in my settings everything is in English. 

Thanks for sharing, good to know that I'm not the first one with this issue. 

Waiting for Esri Support to reply now.

[jamiespencer]

I am having a similar issue and its beyond frustrating - waiting on esri support to assist.