Q: I have an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4S. They are both logged into the same iCloud account. I currently have a passcode lock on both. I want to take the passcode lock off, but it won’t let me. The option for disabling it isn’t highlighted.
It’s this way on both the iPad and the iPhone.
– Daniel
A: This issue most commonly appears when using a corporate Microsoft Exchange account on an iOS device. Microsoft Exchange allows corporate IT departments to set policies via ActiveSync such as requiring passwords, enforcing specific password policies such as length and password history, and even disabling certain features such as the Camera application. Note that the Google Sync service for Google Apps Business and Education accounts can also apply similar policies as these also use the same Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocols.
Such policies act as a minimum security standard, allowing you to set more restrictive options; as a result you may notice that fewer options are available for some of your other passcode settings as well.
For example, the Require Passcode section normally allows you to choose a time interval ranging from Immediately to up to four hours, however if your IT policy limits this to 15 minutes, you will find that you can only select shorter time frames.
Unfortunately, if you have policies that are set as part of a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync account, the only way for you to remove these policies is to delete the actual account from your device, by going into Mail, Contacts, Calendars in your Settings app, selecting it, and choosing the option to delete it.
Note that this will also remove all e-mail, contact, calendar and reminder information associated with this account. If this is a Gmail account, you might be able to configure it using IMAP instead of Google Sync (Exchange ActiveSync) to avoid applying the security policies, although you will lose some features by doing this such as push e-mail and contact synchronization.
Alternatively, you could contact your organization’s IT group to see if there’s any possibility of them changing the policy or making an exception.
