The iPad can not be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items (additional 1.02 GB required).

I also have the same problem, tried everything been written here before...no way.

It says " iPad cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items (additional 162,6 MB!!!! required).

yet there is still 2,4 GB free... what should i do?

Any working and useful help??? And all this happens after the latest OP update :-(

I had a problem with space when i took the new ipad out of the box. i think that the software may have been corrupted. What I did, and by the way it worked. I did a restore of the device while it was connected to my itunes account on my computer, it will redownload ios 5.1, it will be like the device was taken out of the box, so be careful you backup everything that is on the device to your itunes account. After, I did the restore I did not have a problem with space.

The solution I have found to this problem is:

On the summary page in iTunes for the device you are trying to sync, make sure that "Sync only checked songs and videos" is checked.

step 2: unselect everything except one song / video. Let it sync, which it should now. Once the sync is sucessfull and done, then go back and select all the stuff you want to move over and try again. This time it should work.

The way I see the problem is this, I tried to sync to a different computer than I did last time. It told me that when I do this it will delete everything I had on the iPad / iPhone already, and the capacity bar slides down to about nothing. However, it didn't really delete anything YET and is still semi-full of stuff from syncing with another computer. When you try to add a bunch of media and sync from the new computer it fails with a message like "iPad cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items (additional 2.4 gb required) and yet it shows 5.4 gig free. Well, it's not free yet, it didn't delete all the stuff it said it would delete because the sync with the new computer didn't happen. The capacity bar reset it's size, but the iPad really is still pretty full of stuff. It's failing because it shows 5 gig of free space after you've picked your media, but really it's too full of media from the previous computer. Hard to explain in writing.

Unchecking everything but 1 file will let it do the sync, because it can sync and move that 50 meg music file into the remaining 2.4 gb of free space that really only does exist.

WHEN it finally does that sync it will clear out all the stuff it said it would when you first started. So, all the media that was filling it to a point it only had 2.4 gb of free space is NOW finally gone. NOW it really does have a lot of free space, unlike what that lying junky capacity bar was saying it would have.

So, now that it got rid of all the stuff and you have plenty of space now, go back and select all the media you can fit on there, while watching the capacity bar. You still cant put 16 gig of stuff on a 16 gig iPad, but at least now you can put 12 gig of stuff on their without it saying it needs 2.4 gig more room while showing 5.4 gig of free space.

*numbers are just examples, not real math*

Hope this helps -- it worked for me.

Thanx a lot BCSeer. It helpd and worked for me too!!!

Dude, did you try checking the "sync only checked songs and videos" and "manually manage music and videos" boxes in the option box in the summary tab of itunes? Worked for me

I did try this and it still didnt work. I then tried manually manage but do not even check one song. FINALLY that removed all the stuff that was "stuck" and now syncing the whole library seems to have worked. Only problem I STILL have left is that whereas my ipad used to have all my cover art, it has long since disappeared. (This happened months ago and of course apple have not replied to my query) Each time I sync I lose different art. VERY ANNOYING...(my library used to look so pretty!) So thanks for the tip.

This is my first ever Apple Discussions post...

I had the same problem and couldn't figure it out at all.

I already have 2 ipads and bought the new one yesterday.

It is like my other 2 ipads (32Gb) and I was tryring to set it up identically.

The iTunes/iPad sync wouldn't work and it kept collapsing when starting to sync 4600 photos (only about 6Gb).

I kept reducing the numbe rof photos to sync with no luck.

I have 24Gb free on this new ipad so space isn't a problem.

I reset the iPad... I performed all the instrucutions in this thread...

I Googled... I turned all combinations of settings on and off... etc. etc...

It turns out that there was very little free space ON THE ORIGINATING COMPUTER DRIVE.

i.e. the drive with my 4600 photos only had 55Mb available (free) out of 1Tb.

I deleted some old lightroom files (35Gb) from that drive and voila... the sync works.

i have the same problem.

Thank you so very much. Your tip about synching only unchecked songs and videos did the trick and I'm thrilled.

I just bought a new computer and have been having so many problems with iTunes.

Next time I'll buy an mp3 player that doesn't need iTunes.

Again, thank you!

just got a new laptop and had the same problem. Your solution worked perfectly...well thought out...nice to outhink the software!

Great suggestion. After deleting some music, thinking that would help the situation, I'm a little bummed, but overall your post was valuable. Kudos to you!

This happens because there are "orphane" files still hanging when the iPad is physically connected to the computer after trying to sync the first time.

What you need to do is:

1. Uncheck music, photo and video syncing
2. Click on apply (removes all music, pics and videos from the iPad)
3. Check music, photo and video syncing again and choose whatever files you want synced
4. Click on sync

This should work.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1503

I tried all of the suggestions in this forum thread, as well as the linked support articles. Checking and unchecking the various boxes in iTunes didn't work. It was suggested that doing this would remove the existing music from my iDevice, and afterward I would be able to sync it back. The problem is that nothing I tried actually removed the existing music from my device. iTunes showed that no music was on my device, when in fact it had over 5,000 songs. Manually deleting them one by one was out of the question. What I ended up doing was using the option on the device in Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. Then I restored the iPhone from backup. Voilà!

So here's what finally worked for me.

I kept deleting (unloading) stuff from the iPad. First I de-selected Movies to sync. Then I de-selected Music. Then I started de-selecting large apps. When I finally removed enough stuff, the sync worked and then I could add back all the stuff I wanted on the iPad in the first place.

Here's what I think was happening behind the scenes.

This iPad 2 is mostly used by my 10 year old. He has a few really big graphics-intensive games (FIFA, NBA, racecar games, etc.) which take up 1 to 1 1/2 GB each. The iPad has "wanted" (my term) to update many of these apps for a long time. But it can't because there isn't enough room to load in several new large apps and remove the old ones. My son lives with it because everything is working fine for him.

Then I come along and want to put a video on the device. It's small, I think. But to load my small video, a sync has to occur, and when it tries to do a sync, there's this backlog of as-of-yet un-updated huge apps waiting to load. I delete ever more items from the device and get bizarre messages like "not enough room to load 25 MB of stuff, 2.56 GB needed" because of the backlog of unseen apps that want to update.

Again, I got it all working by pulling off ever more large items and entire categories of content, which freed up enough room to let a sync finally work from start to finish. Then I easily loaded back on the content I wanted with subsequent sync's.

Hope I'm right and I hope this helps.

Best,

-- Josh

Read this blog post : https://t.co/N1z3YJlI7h. Hope this helps 🙂