How to create provisioning profile for client app?

Question

I created an app and sold it to a client. Fast forward 10 months, he asked me to do some work on the app which I did. Now I am trying to submit the app for him.

I have the "App Manager" role in iTunesConnect. The issue I am having is that when I try to Archive the app in Xcode I get the following issues:

Failed to create provisioning profile. The app ID "com.xxxx.xxxx" cannot be registered to your development team. Change your bundle identifier to a unique string to try again.

and

No profiles for 'com.xxxx.xxxx' were found. Xcode couldn't find a provisioning profile matching 'com.xxxx.xxxx'.

I've created provisioning profiles before but how would I go about creating this one? If I need the "App ID" to create it through https://developer.apple.com/, how would I recreate that? I deleted this app id when I sold it almost a year ago.

My train of thought is going like this right now: the client added me as an app manager and I can now see the app I am doing work on in itunesconnect.apple.com. How do I make this 'team' appear in Xcode in order to get the provisioning profile?

Answer 1

Right-now you are added as App-Manager to your client's iTunes-Account. This gives you right to do some management stuff on iTunes (upload build, submit, testflight, create app...), but nothing related to the Xcode side. That's why the Team and Role will never appears in your Xcode account. (You are not added yet!)

You need to be added to the Team of their Apple-Developper-Account with at least Team-Admin privileges to be able to do all aspects of development & distribution.

Team admins manage all assets used to sign your apps, either during development or when your team is ready to distribute an app.

Managing Your Developer Account Team

Also your client needs to be enrolled as organization to be able to add people.

If you have an organization membership in the Apple Developer Program, you can add people to your team and assign them roles, thereby granting them levels of access to team assets.

Also keep in mind that the switch from an individual Account to an organization is a time consuming process, and it's not straight forward. They need the organization to provide some administrative info about the company. I advise to not advise them to switch right now but after the release to iTunes.

The quick solution is to use their apple-id to build and release, or to have one of them do it for you.

Answer 2

I had the same issue a few months ago.

Failed to create provisioning profile. The app ID "com.xxxx.xxxx" 
cannot be registered to your development team. Change your 
bundle identifier to a unique string to try again.

The cause (for me) was that our company had a $99 Apple Developer account (so we could put our app on the App Store) and a $299 Apple Enterprise Account (so we could create and privately distribute in-house apps)

On the Apple Developer website, we had registered our com.MikesCompany.AppName ID whilst logged into our $99 Developer Account, as our goal was to sell it via the App Store.

But, of course, when we were developing and testing our app, using our Enterprise Account, Xcode stubbornly refused to let us use this App ID in a Provisioning Profile as it was "already in use".

There are many reasons I loathe Xcode (and looking at its rating in the Apple App Store, I'm far from being alone) and this whole code-signing stuff is one of the main reasons...

Year after year, it just doesn't get better (even the new "Automatic Code Signing" feature allows you to build versions which will blatantly never run on a device, and give you the hopeless and misleading "AppName cannot be installed at this time" message).

Anyway, the answer to your question... make sure that you are building your app using a member of the correct group where your App ID was created in.