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I activated 6 passes (my family) on my phone but used the confirmation number rather than the passport number in the required box. (Long story, embarrassing I know) 

We have booked one trip it’s not for another month.  Can I deactivate and then deactivate (on same device) with light affecting my trip? (I’ve paid for reserved seats)

Thank you kindly in advance :) 

Yes, you can deactivate and activate without any problems. This has no effect on any reservations you have made. Reservations are completely separate.

In fact, it's better not to activate anything (the pass, a travel day, an inbound/outbound journey) until you're sure you're going to use it. It's best only to activate on your start date because you never know what will happen and you can only deactivate until midnight before the start date.


Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days. 

 Planning

The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries. 

 Reservations 

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website.  You can look at the guide in the link:

https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105

If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.

Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.

 Activation of pass

During the activation process, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before 00.00 on the day the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.

It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.

 Activation of travel day

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass allowing you to create the QR code (your ticket), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage  You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.


Thanks for this advice but what if I don’t connect the journey to a trip until say the day before travel but then discover that the train is fully booked and we miss out?


Thanks for this advice but what if I don’t connect the journey to a trip until say the day before travel but then discover that the train is fully booked and we miss out?

The reservation have nothing to do with the app. They are separate from the app. Please look at my previous reply for how to make reservations.


Interrail can be overwhelming to new users. No e more so in the relationship between trips , journeys and reservations. 

To keep it simple

Once you add your pass to the app you need to create a trip. You only have one tri per pass, but the trip attached to your pass would be better named your planner or diary

 It merely holds your probable trains for the whole of that passes duration.

You cab add or delete trains at will with no problem 

To travel on a train you need to activate the pass with you first travel day as its start date.that creates a travel day in the app. You then add the journey to the travel day either from your trip or manually, so you literally can add a train at the last minute and travel.

That brings us onto reservations.

Many long distance and express trains across Europe require reservationsvations as well as a ticket to travel.

Adding  a train to your pass does not create any reservations.That has to be done totally separately to your pass, confusingly interrail has a reservation tool  but there are many other service providers. See the answes above.


And you can perfectly book reservations without activating the pass.


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