Can't delete photos on iPad

I have spent two days now trying to delete over 1000 photos from my iPad, without success. I did manage to remove a great many, but these oddly stubborn ones remain. One set is titled 'camera roll' and the other is an album I created from several sources. When I tap on them in 'edit' mode, the little x that should appear at the top, allowing deletion, simply doesn't appear. When I open the 'camera roll' or 'album' and tap an individual photograph, the trash can symbol doesn't appear. If I tap on 'share' and select individual photos, I can mail them, tweet them, Facebook them - everything but delete them. I have connected my iPad to my MacBook Pro but the photos on the iPad don't appear when I open iTunes, so there is no way of deleting them here either. This is really frustrating because I deleted other photos from the iPad by copying them to the Mac which then asked me if I wanted to delete the copied photos from the attached 'camera'. I said 'yes' and the photos disappeared from the iPad. But these 1000 photos can't be copied to the Mac because they don't appear anywhere when the iPad is connected to the Mac. By that I mean there isn't a 'photos' tab available. There are tabs for books, movies, videos and music, but NOT photos! Can anyone explain what is going on here? I am setting off on a long trip next week and need to be able to copy photos from my camera to the iPad as I travel. But as things stand the iPad has insufficient capacity because of all these unwanted photos. HELP!!!

Do you know how the photos got onto the iPad ? If they were synced from a computer then they can't be deleted directly in the Photos tab, they can only be removed via your computer's iTunes - nor will they show in Image Capture, iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac for copying/deleting.

Or are you using Photo Stream (Settings > iCloud > Photos) ?

For the Photos tab on your computer's iTunes, how wide is your iTunes window when you connect the iPad and select it in iTunes ? The Photos tab should be the right-most tab, so if your iTunes screen isn't wide enough then it might not be able to display it - if you extend the window does Photos show ?

Thanks, K_P. You gave me a few pointers there that helped. I turned off Photo Streaming and all but 77 of my photos, in a single album, disappeared from the iPad. I then reconnected to the Mac and figured out how to delete these photos from the iPad by Syncing. Even though the iPad photo album wasn't on the Mac, I guess the individual photos are on the Mac. So by having NO photos selected on the Mac before Syncing, what seems to happen is that the existing iPad photos disappear while no new ones are copied from the Mac. I must say, though, there is absolutely nothing intuitive about this. It is very much a case of trial and error. However, a residual issue remains. When I interrogate 'usage' on the iPad (after rebooting) it still says photos are taking up over 4GB of space even though there are now no photos visible in the iPad's 'Photo's. Likewise when I interrogate the iPad when it is connected to the Mac, the iPad's available space hasn't increased since all the photos were deleted. All that happened is that 'photos' disappeared from the usage bar, but the category 'other' increased from 2GB to 6GB. So it looks like the space occupied by the 1000+ photos still isn't free. How come?

Have you tried a soft-reset of your iPad to see if that changes the amount in Other ? Press and hold both the sleep and home buttons for about 10 to 15 seconds (ignore the red slider), after which the Apple logo should appear - you won't lose any content, it's the iPad equivalent of a reboot.

Or tried re-syncing and/or backing up and restoring ? If you do backup/restore then first make sure that all of your purchases are on your computer's iTunes via File > Devices > Transfer Purchases

Many thanks again. I had already tried the reboot without effect. But your suggested backing up and restoring worked. But what a job! I had created scores of documents in 'Pages' and had to email them individually to myself before restoring. What a user unfriendly system this is! At least my photos now only take up whatever space is needed for the software. Could you answer another question? When I a writing this message - and any other message in a similar text box - the iPad keypad covers what I am writing after a few lines. The text won't move up the screen, so I have to type blind. As now! Any suggestions?

Hello this is my first time on the Apple Support Forums and I was having the exact same problem with the removal of existing photos from my iPad's Photo Library. Initially I was preplexed but then I tried something and it worked so I thought I would share it on this discussion post to see if it would help others.

-Open the Photos application and select 'Edit' located on the top right of the screen.

-Tap on all the photos you wish to delete that you have been unable to delete by the normal methods.

-Once you have completed your selection press the 'Add to...' button located on the top right of the screen.

-Create a new album that you will consolidate all of the pictures you wish to delete in. I called mine simply 'Delete'.

-Then select 'Albums' from the top center of the screen, it is located between photos and events.

-Once you are on the Albums screen select 'Edit' on the top right of the screen and a small 'X' should appear on the top left of all of the albums that can be deleted. (I noticed that only the albums I created manually can be deleted; albums created automatically by the application did not display the option to be deleted).

-Press the 'X' on the album containing the pictures you wish to delete

-When the confirmation screen appears select the 'Delete' option and the pictures will be permanently removed from your iPad.

Hopefully this helps!

I was having trouble deleting photos from my Ipad

Go to your photos click on select and on the Then Click

on the photos you wish to delete on the top left hand side there is a rubbish bin click on that , all done! I just worked that out for myself and I am a senior with only an I pad!

Hey, does anyone out there understand that there is NO trashcan icon when we want to delete old photos or pictures from Photos, and I have both downloadced apps that should but did NOT work, and I tried to move them into my dropbox folder but could not?

Specs: ipad1 serial GB********Z3A

iOS 5.1.1

I read all the discussions and they seemed rather empty. They imporessed me that 0 IQs don't know how to use ipad.

<Edited by Host>

How did the photos get on your iPad ? If you synced them from your computer then you delete them in the same as you put them on your iPad, by re-connecting the iPad to your computer's iTunes and changing your photo sync selection.

I am installing one but it forgot to ask for passcode.

They are really sketches from drawingv apps I downloaded.

So you've copied them to the Photos app directly on your iPad, you haven't copied them to Photos by syncing them via your computer's iTunes ? If you have then they should be in the Saved Photos album - is that where they are ?

Yes, essentially but I've tried 3rd party apps without success, my iTunes has no photo sync and there is no trashcan icon. Furthermore, the red "delete' button is inactive.

Did you enable iTunes Match on your iPad? If so, disable it by going to Settings > iTunes and App Store > iTunes Match > OFF

In addition, you can delete photos from any iDevice using copytrans manager without the need to sync/unsync with iTunes.

I Tried that - and the trash can is there, but graded-out and can't be accessed.

even worse - earlier I HAD been able to delete photos that way. Now I can't

and to make matters even worse, I opened up iPhoto - and every deleted photo was there!

Apple REALLY needs to simplify the whole "photos" system for the iPad & iPhone. I've talked to at least 20 other iPad users and not one can figure out how to delete or organize photos (in a way that makes sense and doesn't change on its own).

IMO "Photos" is the single most screwed-up/useless feature on the iPad. I was given a Kindle Fire as a gift - I use it for reading, but also for photos, as you can simply drag/drop or delete in seconds. I keep checking "photos" threads here to see if anything's improved but as nothing has changed I have to carry 2 tablets if I want to show photos!

FWIW I've been to the "Genius Bar" as well. They had no answers either! Apple can't operate their own software!