Deleting books from iPhone

The iCloud symbol means that the book is not on the device itself, but rather stored on the cloud. You can proceed to download it to your device for reading, or not.

If you don't want purchases from the cloud being shown, navigate to Settings. Scroll down to tap on the iBooks panel, then tap on the option that asks whether you want all purchases to be shown.

In that case you need to talk to an iTunes support representative. Go to http://expresslane.apple.com for help with that.

Is there anyone else you know who might have the password to your AppleID account used to purchase from iTunes?

If this person use your AppleID to purchase those books, then those purchases would not appear in your copy of iTunes library, but would be displayed with the cloud with down pointing arrow. iTunes uses cloud technology so any purchase from the iTunes store using your account would have the same behavior you descrbied.

You can go into iTunes, go into manage your account section, to display all previous iTunes purchases. Do you see those purchases? You should change your iTunes account password immediately.

That is ok (that the unwanted ibooks are only on your iphone).

There are 2 ways you can delete them.

1.) Directly from the iBook app, press the edit button on the upper left hand corner, then select all the unwanted ibooks, then click the red "Delete" button on the upper right hand button.

A pop up window will ask you if you only want to delete this copy, or from all devices. Choose the method you want.

2.) If you have your iphone synced with an iTunes library on a PC or Mac, open up iTunes,

Select your iphone, click on the tab named "On this phone", then go to left hand panel to select books, and then select & delete them from your iTunes library. Now sync your iTunes library with your iphone, and those books would be gone.

To hlynur,

I have a temporary work around for your situation. It took some searching around on the web, but I learned something too. 🙂

I am on the newest iTunes version 11.1.1.11, and my iphone5 is on 7.0.2, the latest. When I opened up iTunes, looked at the ibooks on my iphone:

I see 2 ibooks files (free ones) which I had downloaded before, but now when I right click on them, there is no choice of "delete" anymore! This is because this iphone is not synced with this computer, that is why iTunes doesn't allow me to delete them. In order for iTunes to allow me to delete those 2 ibooks, I would have to sync my iphone with this computer.

This is something I don't want to do right now because this computer uses a solid state disk, and I don't want to fill up the disk with my iTunes library.

So I looked up how to delete ibooks from iTunes, found an Apple knowlege base document:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5772

which basically is the same steps I had written to you in the previous email, but on your iphone it doesn't let you delete.

Please see screenshot below, I clicked on the book named "154 iPhone Tips", a blue check mark appears, then I click on "Delete", and it is replace with a slightly different icon. Please see 2nd screenshot.

I understand you said that when you click on "Delete", you don't see the same above picture?

The "Delete This Copy", "Delete From All Devices" doesn't show?

This would be an abnormal condition. You may just have to wipe out your iPhone's iTunes library and start rebuilding it from the cloud. How to wipe iPhone's iTunes library? By trying to sync it with an iTunes library that has nothing in it.

See how the book now shows cloud with down arrow. This means the book is no longer on your iphone, but still in your iTunes library which exits in the cloud.

Now go to iphone's Settings --> iBooks ---> Show All Purchases ---> off.

Now, all those previous purchases in the cloud will no longer show with down arrow.

See how only the "The Three Kingdoms" is the only ibook left.

I also know why you don't see "On this iphone" on your screen. You have picked View --> display side bar, so the iphone appears on the left hand side already, thus "On this iphone" will not show like it does on my screen. After I chose View-->display side bar, "On this iphone" went away on my screen too.

Apple has made some changes to iTunes and I didn't quite like it the first time I saw version 11. I liked the old version better. But after I played with v11 a while, it can be adjusted to look like previous version too.

Best of luck to you on this effort, I have learned along the way too.

Here is a link to a tutorial on how to hide purchased books.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/hiding-purchased-ibooks/

This article says that there is no way to permanently delete a purchase from your Account, but I guess you can try the Apple Product support forum and see if anybody else has a means to do a permanent removal.

Hi, I have that same problem. Books showing in iTunes but not beeing able to delete them. Problem is that those books are not shown in my iPhone either.

Oo?

This is weird. I can see in iTunes the books i had before but not the ones i have now and i cannot delete the ones i had before...

Any other options?

Other thing is that i cannot modify the books even if i sync to this computer. And from my iBooks app in my mac i cannot see the books in my iPhone either...