will itunes erase my iphone if I set it up as new?

Thanks for this. I will try this on my husbands phone. He wants to have some of the music from my iTunes and hasn't ever synced to a computer before. He has a separate iTunes account and was told that I should try iTunes Match. I don't want to pay for this so am I right in thinking that I can "set up as a new phone" on my iTunes and it will not effect my iphone nor will it delete everything he has on his phone? Been researching this for a while and I'm scared to wipe his phone and upset my iTunes!

And people wonder why newer or less expericenced users are so hesitant to ask questions until the problem has grown beyond tolerance. Please, if you really want to help people... stop "helping" people. Kind of ironic: not only was your attitude lousy and likely to go some distance toward dissuading people to ask for help in the future... it was also incorrect. Always plenty of "silly" to go around, right?

It is a legit question too. I consider myself to be a fairly advanced user and I had the same question. Frankly the silly to do would have been just to randomly click an option and hope for the best. I'd much rather this thread than a "Help - I just wiped my iPad thread".

I bought a new iphone after breaking my old one and have just plugged the new one in for the first time (have had it a while) and have the restore or set up as new options. It says by restore that it was last backed up a while ago (when I had the old phone), if I select this option does any body know if i'll be able to get the old photos back?

Or if not, which option should I choose?

Thanks

Lydia, by pressing Restore, the phone will be restored back to the point of the last backup. The photos, however, could still be in "the cloud" if you had your old phone set up that way. So, you perhaps may not lose them, if they are, in fact, still in the cloud.

Walt D in LV

Thank you OP! for taking one for the team, I could have wasted hours if I hadn't stumbled upon your thread. So to the one saying this is a silly question and actually advising the OP to read the user's manual, why don't you read and understand poster's concern first before you make yourself look.. silly.

THANK YOU!!!! This saved me....I've been pulling my hair out trying to answer this exact question. Even posted it in a thread and some guy gave me the wrong answer. Your question was not silly and I'm so glad I ran across your thread!!!!!!! Thank you!

Not a daft question at all. I've been wondering this very same issue trying to backup my Wife's iPad Air. I always used to backup everything via iTunes as I have a lot of content in there that is not purchased from the iTunes store. When my wife was recently having problems, I took it to the Apple Store and the genius suggested setting it up as a new device. He did this in Store, and then when I got home I set it all up again, with email, apps etc. For the last few weeks my Wife has been using it, and automatically backing it up to iCloud. I then come to plug it in to iTunes to back it up there, and sync with some content from within iTunes, and it only gives me a 'Set up as new iPad' option or 'Restore from backup'. Come on Apple, how about another option like 'Backup on this Computer for the first time' or something. This is another ploy to get you to buy in the iCloud model, where everything is purchased from iTunes. Some of the content I have CAN''T be purchased from iTunes, even if I wanted to - so this isn't an option for me.

Not a silly question. This is a support forum, not a critical review.

The question iTunes asks should be

"Do you want to add this device to your iTunes Account?" not "Do you want to set up as a new I(Device)."

Just hit continue and it adds you device to your iTunes account/library.

Many people just get on with the iCloud for a while, but with data streaming costs, sooner or later a "new" device will want to be synced to a computer.

This issue is a show stopper for many people.

Hope this helps

I ran into this exact same situation today. I was assisting my son in trying to backup his 5s to iTunes on his Macbook Pro running Yosemite. The phone has been used and has data and apps and photos and etc. on it that he wants to keep and wants to backup. The two options that iTunes presents:

1. Setup as new (this is a scary choice as it implies that the iPhone will be reverted to factory settings and all data will be lost)

2. Restore from backup (the Macbook Pro does have the backups from an older iPhone on it in iTunes and we do not wish to restore those to the new iPhone)

He wants to backup the 5s for the first time to iTunes. The two choices presented are very confusing. I don't recall running into this uncertainty during the several times I have backed up newish iPhone to iTunes in the past. I don't know if the newest versions of iTunes have become more confusing in choices presented to the user when backing up a new iPhone but it appears to be the case.

Thanks to the posters in this thread who have helped to clarify these choices.

roaminggnome,

Obviously the questions concerning backing up a new iPhone in iTunes are still current for several other users. The two choices presented by iTunes (1. setup as new, and 2. restore from backup) were confusing to the OP and continue to be confusing. Apparently 2 and a half years has not resulted in iTunes being made more clear in these choices. New posters have taken the time to search out a pre-existing thread that deals with the same question they are having. I believe that is the way these discussions are supposed to work. Why start a new thread if one already exists?

Exactly right. ElenaRaq's investigation helped me too and I'm an software development manager.

I notice this kind of unhelpful attitude like dieselvdubs far too often in these forums. Not only was the comment unnecessarily snarky but worse, it was wrong.

What doesn't work? I have restored as new.

I didn't describe anything or how it would work, other than restoring as new, leaves the iPhone with no content just as when it was new. It does work exactly like that.

psst. you responded to a nearly 3 year old post.

Gad I found this post. I wasted hours on iClouded-up "solutions". I was a-scared to set up as new phone. I can't believe this issue persists after (at least) 3 years. Simply adding the words "or first time sync" to the set up button is all you need - boom, thousands of man hours saved across the world!

Dear Apple,

After 3 years, it still continue to confuse people.

As a user, I expect some help text to these kind of "mission-critical" options.

This is not a silly question.

I'm a software engineer and I was confused as well at the first time.

This is totally a CX issue that your company should consider to handle.