There are purchased items on the iPhone “X’s iPhone” that have not been transferred to your iTunes library. You should transfer these items to your iTunes library before updating. So how about a clue as to what's not transferred and how to?

Thank you! "...be sure the device is highlighted and not the connected computer" is a VERY important detail! 🙂

File -> Devices -> Transfer Purchases, in iTunes 12 anyway.

And yes I agree, it's VERY un-Apple-like to tell me there's a specific problem, and NOT either give me a button to click to fix it, or to at least TELL me how to fix it myself.

Lets not turn into Microsoft, huh...

Thanks Batwing. You are right. I looked on the settings sidebar on the left and went to "Apps" and it's just taking forever to transfer my 70 apps.

I just downloaded iTunes and this same confusing message which hasn't changed in like 7 years pops up. Must be nice to not have to care about confusing your customers or EVER making your software more usable.

And again, the same follow up confusing popup message that always comes: "iTunes is currently syncing the iPhone ... Are you sure you want to stop and update the iPhone software instead?" Update Cancel

How has this never been addressed in all these years? Does no one at Apple actually ever use iTunes? But hey the iTunes logo is red now instead of blue. Snazzy!

Ha ha an hour later and yet more confusing popups, still not updated.

"iTunes could not back up the iPhone... because it has not been set up yet." ORLY?

"iTunes could not back up the iPhone because it has a passcode." (Note phone is black, not giving any indication I need to enter a passcode. Do not hit Try Again before figuring out how that you need to enter a passcode or you will have to do it all over again in 5 minutes when everything reboots. Still to a black iPhone.

Highlighting the iDevice icon does nothing. Either way, iTunes reports that it is transferring purchases, but the error message is still there when you try to sync. Useless. It is now 2 years and 2 versions of iOS later since this thread was started, and still Apple won't fix the problems. Apple software has gotten too buggy to use.

File>Devices is fine- got to that okay- Thank you!

But Devices>transfer files is a no go, because "Tranfer Files" is gray-ed out, not ALLOWING me to select it. Please advise!

1. Thank you for the instructions on how to resolve the cryptic message and convoluted process for "transferring purchases".

2. I totally agree that Apple iTunes and other software are candidate to be "worst user experience ever". I am professional software developer and usability analyst and I am lost every time I need to use iTunes. iTunes has transformed over the years into convoluted and incomprehensible garbage. Same goes for iPhone Reminders.

Thank you arbolton, your resolution was the only thing that would make the error message go away for me even though I experienced this issue 2 years after you posted your resolution.

I didn't know how to determine which files m y program considered "purchased". I highlighted "music" under " Library", then entered the word "purchased" in the search bar and clicked on "show purchased in music". A bunch of files appeared. When I right clicked on them, selected" get info", and then clicked on the "file" tab I could see that these were all "Purchased AAC audio files". I highlighted them all and set them up to sync with my phone.

I would like some clarity on this statement that "this is not monitored by Apple" because I have posted a snarky thing or two over the years and have been removed from a particular thread and gotten e-mails from "Apple Support Communities Staff" via an apple.com e-mail address, so I'm not sure that Apple doesn't monitor these forums. Perhaps one of the forum members reported my snarky post to Apple?

It would be nice if Apple did monitor these forums and be a little more transparent with bug reports and fixes.

For any of you that are still experiencing this lately you may have the same problem that I had. I was receiving the same message and in my case I have my iPhone setup to backup to the cloud. The fix was to do a backup to iCloud first before attempting the upgrade. Hope this helps someone, cheers!

The "purchases" might be apps (free or not) that you downloaded directly to your iPhone using the App Store app. They might also be apps purchased some time ago but which have more recent updates that were downloaded to your iPhone. Updates or purchases made since the last time you synced your iPhone will be copied to your iTunes library as a backup.

The "purchases" might also be music or movies purchased on the iPhone but which are not yet in the iTunes library.

It is 2015 and this is still an issue! Thank you for the post.