Can't open PDF files in iBooks on my iPad

Settings\iBooks - try taking the tick out of Sync Collections. Let the pad and iTunes manage the syncing operations under the following.

Settings\App store tick all items.

and in iTunes on PC - Edit\Preferences Store tab - tick Books box. and tick - always Check for Available downloads.

Connect device to iTunes via cable - then click on Library\Books in left pane. Ensure all titles are ticked. Click your device icon at the left, and in the window that appears navigate to the Book tab. Sync Books should be ticked, and Selected Books option.

Check all titles are ticked, then sync to your device - noting that two syncs may be required, sometimes three if the material category as given in the embed code differs.

when finished, check your library, arrange your collections as you wish and see how you get on from here.

In Settings\App Store, dont forget to have Allow downloads on Cellular On as well.

Note that if you save to ibooks on your ipad with these options as is, your library in itunes will update with the new titles form its internet connection - not via the devices' sync.

If you update ibooks collection with iTunes open on your PC, clicking sync will not pdate the collection. Close iTunes and reopen it. After the next sync, the books will be in your library marked with a tick, and if you browse to your devices books page (click device at left in PC iTunes, then Books tab), they will be there too ticked also.

I think that when iBooks sync is set, it makes a network call that conflicts with the ipad\itunes setting. depending on network bandwidth and method of download the library update may or may not succeed.

The operation given here has been tested at the time of writing and everything worked as it should.

Hope this may be of some help to others.

Best wishes, Ct

I am also having the problem of downloading and reading PDFs in iBooks only iPad2 and this has been going on for some time now. I am thinking that iBooks 5.1.1 IS the real problem here. I have tried everything from resetting my iPad to deleting GoodReader and nothing seems to be working. I would hope that someone at Apple would be monitoring some of these discussion groups and then maybe, just maybe, someone at Apple would look into what is going on with their iBooks app!!! This is so FRUSTRATING! I was using iBooks exclusively to save PDFs of technical reports and documents, but now I can only save them to "open in" GoodReader. At least I have an option, but I would rather be using iBooks for these operations.I like Apple products and have been a Mac owner/tech for about 27 years (since 1985) and I have always had great luck with their software, but iBooks *****! at least the way it is workinig (or non-working) now! C'mon Apple have someone FIX iBooks so we can do the work we need to do. By the way, I was using my iPad2 as my main computer until iBooks started screwing up this way, even though I also have a MacBook Pro that is awesome to use. The size of the iPad makes it ideal for everyday use, if apps work correctly. I know I am not the only one who woulod like to see Apple fix iBooks!

Start iTunes and connect your device by cable. - after any sync operation finishes, click on your device and navigate to books at the top where it also says summary, info etc. Unsync all your Books. - if books appear greyed out, go to Summary page and take tick out of 'Manually Manage'

After unsyncing, find ibooks App on your ipad and delete it, in itunes on your PC do the same by going to Library\Apps and also deleting it.

Next you will need to locate the following - on Vista it is here - c:\Users\[your user account]\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications. Locate any copies of iBooks and delete them here also - original downloads + updates are stored consistent to any backups and updates since last iOS update.

Having deleted, all iBooks copies, close iTunes and disconnect ipad.

From your PC, restart iTunes, navigate to Store\Apps Store and then iBooks page. Click on buy ( you wont be charged ) A window will pop up confirm you have already brought it and would you like too download it again - confirm.

when download completes, reconnect ipad and sync App across.

Resync books and data

This will repair the default associations, and should solve your problem.

When finished do the same for Goodreader if that also causes problems. but use as is first to see if one or either of the Application installations is buggy with your particular set-up.

Best Regards, Ct

I too am having a problem with ibooks pdf's. I have backed up my entire ipad2 to itunes and then rebooted my ipad to factory settings. I then reloaded everything from itunes and it worked for 2 days. Then went right back to not handling the downloads again. This has been a problem for me ever since I downloaded the new update for ipad2 in April. I am at a loss as to what to do next.

@coppertiger

Please let me understand.

I have a lot of pdf downloaded directly on ipad and not present in the pc library of itunes.

If I sync ipad now with itunes, are you sure that I am not deleting all the files that are on ipad but not on the pc ?

lt me know.

thanks

d.

Ah - yes need to be careful here. First things - in the options at the bottom of Summary page - are you set to manually manage - and do you have sync turned off in itunes for Books? This will be under the tab - Books - when you click your device to get the summary page to display, then select the Books tab on the page header bar (Where summary, info, apps, music etc is). your message seems to indicate that sync off seems to be the case - or you have selected only say pdf's to sync - please verify.

Also - do the pdfs/books in the other application you mention, appear under your devices 'tree' section for books in itunes (expand your ipad icon in iTunes and check in books list here). If not then obviously that book data needs to be transferred into a general device or iTunes library, so it is not deleted if that application is deleted.

once I have your configuration information I will test the set up first with my own libraries, to avoid you losing any info - thanks for asking - i wrote my first reply on the basis your library was fully synced.

Best regards, Ct

I appreciate your suggestions but I confused. I am having this same issue. I have dozens of books and probably a hundreds personal PDF's iBooks that I downloaded from Mail or from the Internet. Probably for the last few months, I have not been able to "Open in" iBooks for PDF's from Mail or the internet. When I am in a PDF in Mail or internet and I click on 'Open In", iBooks opens temporarily and I see the new PDF appear in the bookshelf for a second or two and then it disappears. I have no problem however using Open In to save PDF's to any other 3rd party App such as Annotate +, Good Reader, Notability and many others. After this issue started I used to be able to get the Open In iBooks function to work if I tried it multiple times.Sometimes it would work on the 4th or 5th try, sometimes the 2nd, and sometimes I would try 10 times and finally just give up and save it to Annotate+. I tried some tricks that seemed to work sometimes. Like making sure I would close the iBooks app in the multi-task bar before using the Open In iBooks function. Sometimes that seemed to work. Now nothing works. I've tried dozens of different PDF's from Mail or Safari dozens of times each and nothing will "Open In" iBooks anymore. This really ***** as iBooks is my preferred storage and reader for PDF's. I only us Annotate + when I need to edit or annotate a PDF which is pretty rare. Typically I am just saving to read them for work or personal use. iBooks is the best PDF reader in my opinion, when it works. I dont ever sync my iPad with my Mac anymore since iCloud. I have everything backed up to iCloud. No reason to sync with my Mac and take up valuable space and effort.

I haven't synced with my Mac in at least a few months. Anyway, I am afraid to delete the iBooks apps because Im not sure what will happen to all of my PDF's in iBooks. Not worried about the books which I can just download again from iBooks store. I could sync with my Mac to backup my PDF's but I believe that you also mentioned in your post that we should delete iBooks backups on our PC to fix this issue. I just want to ensure a way to save and backup my PDF's from iBooks before I go deleted the app and anything on my Mac. I assume that they should be backed up in iCloud. Just want to make sure.

I want to make sure that your suggested fix is the right one for my issue. Not sure if you were responding to someone else with a different issue. Also am curious what is going on here and why Apple has not addressed this issue with an update or at least a fix posted somewhere on their help website. This is a big pain in the but. Another issue that drives me nuts in the limitation of app choice when using Open In. I have hundreds of apps on my ipad and dozens that work with PDF's, Word, Excel, Powerpoints, etc. More often than not when I click on Open In, the app that I want to use is not listed as a choice. It is absurb to have to delete all of the apps in the list until I get the one I want to use to appear. How can Apple have not fixed this issue in the many years that the Open In feature has been available on the iPhone and iPas is astonishing to me? Don't Apple employees have this same problem and submit a feature request? Don't they read the hudreds of posts on here regarding these issues for the last few years? If they really want the iPad and iPhone to be serious business tools, these issues need to be fixed. People can't have randomness decide what app they use to open a file from an email attachment or Safari. Just venting. Sorry.

I there any way to contact Apple about this ibooks issue and get listened to ?

It's simple download adobe reader from appstore.

A perfect message. Said for me very well--but leave off the "sorry". It's not you who should be sorry.....it's Apple!

I've been to the genius bar three times now about this. Each "genius" shakes their head and says they haven't seen this before. Come on.........I may not be a genius, but I know when I'm getting the runaround!

Settings\iCloud\Storage and Backup - if icloud backup is on - tap on Manage Storage - tap on your ipad's name, then on next page tap on Show All Apps - locate iBooks, Is iBooks backing up to the cloud?

If it is, then open iTunes on your PCconnect your device - if it syncs let it perform the sync.

When it has finished, browse to your library in iTunes and check to see how many of your documents are listeed in the books section of the library Menu.

If the Books are listed proceed as follows. Click your device to display the summary page (and I recommend you are connected by 30 pin to usb on your PC for this).

Navigate to the Books tab on the line that says Summary, info etc. Put a tick in Sync All, as you do, check the Memory bar change at the foot of the page. If Books and PDF's are syncing with your device then the memory bar will indicate this. If it is - then hit apply and then sync, this will place all your books pdf's onto your device. (Note that if you have several hundred it may take a few passes for it to complete.

When you have fully loaded your library, go back to settings on your pad and turn off ibooks in icloud backup - select delete from icloud (dont select to keep on pad as this will duplicate).

Now open a document in safari - tap on 'Open in iBooks' and test. Note that large files may fail to load if you are exceeding your data limits or available bandwidth. Using wifi is probably best for any large file handling operation.

Also check on your device in Settings\iBooks that all options are set to On. (including sync collections).

Regards, Ct

@coppertiger

I appreciate very much your suggestions but they are quite difficult to implement.

I think Apple shoud solve the general problem with ibooks.

Thanks a lot

Not sure if exactly the same issue but it worries me. I have 2 IPad2 running 5.01. For the last Fall semester two students downloaded PDFs from our Moodle (LMS) site and tooks exams and viewed lessons as a test. No issues, they downloaded about 100 PDFs from that site and could read them.

I was given both IPads and told to figure out how to image one of them for an expanded number of IPad2s. I used 1 to do different things just to see how it worked (I am an CPM-DOS-Windows person without access to a MAC). I was able to use IBooks and open the PDFs. Then, I think I deleted many PDFs on that IPad. Now IBooks will only flash at me and hold the empty bookcase on the screen. I believe I am downloading PDFs from the same Moodle site but evidently they do not "stick" on this IPad.

Was considering upgrading the troublesome IPad2 to 5.1 and upgrading IBooks to the latest version. This thread caught my attention.

The second IPad works fine. I have done my best not to do anything that impacts it. IBooks shows all the PDFs and will open the ones I tired. I even downloaded another PDF from our Moodle site, not problems.

We want to switch more of our students from XP laptops to IPad2s next semester. I am checking to see what OS the new ones are running and if they are the same as the 2 which were tested last Fall.

We tend to be on the "cutting edge" of a conservative market (government). My guess is that, if this is not going to work for us, then higher ups in the IT food chain are not going to approve other purchases. However, that decicion and communication is way above my pay grade.

I just want to make it work for 50 students next semester 🙂 I will let everyone know what happens.