Enabling "Sync Books" in iTunes wants to remove songs

If you've always "manaually managed" the iPhone then it won't neccessarily know that it is associated with your computer's library for media so will still issue the warning about removing everything. If the music you've manually added previously is all still in the iTunes library, then despite the warning, it should leave the music untouched.

... provided you create one or more playlists with your selections and select these on the various tabs before commencing the sync operation.

Few simple steps to get over this:

1. First download "iBooks" free app from itunes

2. Add your "PDF file" into the "Library" in iTunes

3. When you try to sync it will give the above message - "will wipe all songs ...."

4. In iTunes "File" click on "Transfer purchases from your iPad"

5. You will see "Books" appear now under "Devices"

6. Drag and drop the "PDF file" from "Books" in "Library" to "Books" in "Devices"

7. Job done :-)

@ SGSMumbai,

Thanks a lot, I made it.

"No advantage" to manually managing? Maybe if you have a small music library or rarely add to it, but if you regularly buy and rip CDs to your device it is much less of a hassle to just drag 'n drop 'em over instead of messing around with playlists or what have you.

The only disadvantages to manually managing your device arise entirely from Apple's ridiculous updating and syncing problems.

It's a valid point of view, but I suspect you've just underestimated the power of smart playlists. When I rip or download a new CD into our family's library I mark the grouping field with the names of the members of the familiy that like that artist. Next time I connect their iDevice and sync they automatically get the new selections. If I correct a detail on an album, every device gets that correction next time they sync. In addition, updated play counts & play dates and ratings sync in both direction. My library is too big to go on my iPhone, but including playlists with rules such as 2gb of most recently played, 2b of most recently updated, 2Gb of most often played etc. gives me access to a useful cross selection of stuff I like without having to manually wade through my library and decide what to put on and what to leave off. I can tweak the rules to exclude accidentally including stuff I don't want on it, or add just a playlist for excluding specific things.

If that sounds too complicated then simply syncing with a single playlist called say "My iPhone" would have all the "benefits" of manually managing the iPhone but would let me do it whether or not the device was connected. - an offline editor if you will. And if I had to restore the phone then I wouldn't have lost my selections.

But hey, we each find a way that works for us. Enjoy the music...

tt2

If you sync with another library it wants to delete everything that isn't from that library. But what you can do is this if you don't mind not being able to download from itunes any past purchased stuff for 90 days but if you just want to add the new stuff it seems to work

1) purchase the book

2) Don't sync

3) go to your ipad and open the book store you will see your purchase... download it directly from itunes

If you used another apple ID for other stuff you will lose the ability to download past purchases from that account for 90 days but you will have the new stuff

i was having the same problem. my bookd wouldn't sync to my iphone, altho itunes said they were synced, and i had all books checked. ****, my audiobooks synced fine. idk why i lost al my books and only 1 PDF book was showing up. i tried draging onto i phone, deleteing ibooks, re-downloading...nothing worked...UNTIL FINALLY....i figured it out. i had to manually drag the books from "Library - Books" to "Store - Purchased" idk why...but that worked. i did that...re-synced..and my books and all my PDFs are back in ibooks....weird....FIX THIS APPLE!!!

These steps worked. I was trying to transfer PDF files to my iPad and ran into the same "remove all music, video and TV shows files". Once the iPad was synced with my PC, I went to the Books section of the Library in iTunes and dragged the files to the Books section on the iPad. Each time I dragged a PDF file, iTunes updated the file inside iBooks as within the PDF section. It worked. Thanks.

The drag and drop icon changes to "Not allowed" when it hovers over the folders in the device.

I am really stuck and frustrated that I just cant copy one PDF to my iPad from my new Laptop I bought cause

my old one died. So yes my iPad is talking to a new laptop - and I have yet to retrieve all my stuff from my old

laptop's harddisk. I get all those errors that this thread is talking about synching etc. But I am still not able to copy one PDF from my laptop to the iPad yet - Dran n Drop doesnt work for me - I tried moving it to Purchases and then tried to copy etc. The past menu item is enabled when I clicked on Books folder for my device - but doesnt do anything. I really feel I am stuck. I have a lot of PDF files on my iPad manually copied earlier which I dont to loose. These are all free PDFs downloaded from different sites, like apache etc. Collecting them again will be a big hassle, though free. Why does Apple have to make copying one PDF from a new laptop, which is now authorised, to copy to iPad so difficult.

This totally works....even for PDF's that weren't actually purchased but that are on a hard drive. But, for me, it only worked when the iPhone was connected via USB to my laptop, not via Wifi.

So, once again...

Connect iPhone to computer via USB cable.

Check "Transfer purchases...."under File in iTunes

Drag and drop book, PDF, etc. from iTunes Library to Books under iPhone.

Voila!

I wish I had found this thread at the beginning of this evening.

- I bought my first books through iTunes for my son's birthday. And I was helping my son add these couple of books to his iPod Touch on my wife's computer.

- I thought books needed to be synced. So, I selected "Sync Books" in iTunes (I ignored the warning) and not only was my son's music erased but then I could not add any playlists to the iPod Touch to properly put back his music.

- This seemed like an OS glitch so, I did a clean restore of the iPod Touch.

- I again selected "Sync Books" in iTunes and again I could not add my son's music with playlists to the iPod Touch.

- So, I did a second restore.

- After much searching on the web, I found this thread. And this time I followed the instructions from berlingoodman's post;

"Check "Transfer purchases...."under File in iTunes

Drag and drop book, PDF, etc. from iTunes Library to Books under iPhone."

* Then the books transferred to my son's iPod Touch without syncing!

After this I was able to sync apps and still manually add all the playlists/music to my son's iPod Touch which he prefers! (Two hours total were spent on this.)

* The problem imo is that Apple has completely tied syncing books with syncing music. It would be nice if users had the option as with apps where they can be synced but at the same time music can then be added manually.

I read through all these replies and the closest to what I think you were asking was the copy/paste solution, but it's not as simple as it should be. In Library/Books, right-click on the book you want to transfer to your device and select copy. Then in Devices/Books, you can't just right-click and paste as there is nowhere for you to paste it. You have to go through the Edit menu to paste. Worked a treat for en ebook I've been working on and wanted to preview on all my devices, but I didn't want to sync them all to my MacBook Pro. I hope it works for anyone else who has an epub file of their own they want to add to a device.