How to get a pdf in iBooks onto my iPhone?

I had similar problems to everyone else.

Problem

• Ibooks showing a larger collection of epub and pdf files than was showing in itunes.
• Since they didnt show in itunes, they wouldnt sync obviously.
• Also in Itunes I had a couple of old files (downlevel books) that didnt appear in ibooks

Solution

Here is what I came to realise.

• When you simply 'open' an epub book in ibooks it shows, but it won't copy over to itunes.
• When you 'add to library' it will let you go to the book or pdf, choose it and it will add it both to ibooks and itunes.
• It takes time for the ibooks to appear in itunes (a restart of both seems to help). Once you start to see ibooks match itunes, you are on your way.

• In Itunes, in Summary / Books, don't Sync 'All books' - choose 'Selected books' instead. The 'tick' the books you want.
• I synced with a cable on this instance. Normally my music all happens by wifi. I didnt try the wifi option with the books.

In my case, I have three epub books. (written myself) and categorised as 'Erics Books' ..so I have to change the category on my Ipad and Iphone from 'purchased' to be able to see my books.

Its all working smoothly for me at the minute, I can 'add to library' pdfs and epubs with no problem.

Hope this helps... Its been a frustrating process. But no way am I going to email stuff one by one... that defeats the purpose of automatically syncing.

I try the solution by Moldcat and everything is fine now, no more problems of synchronisation between Ibook ios and mac os.🙂

Moldcats suggestion/solution above Jan 6, 2014 1:57 AM, did it for me. Stupid but it worked. I regret that I didn't start reading this thread from the last post 😢

1. Open iBooks app on your mac.

2. Add files to Library

3. Move books from iTunes (see Moldcats suggestion)

4. sync

moldcat

I got a few pages into this discussion before finding my own solution and thought I would post it in case it helped somebody. Apologies if it's already on here.

In iBooks, select File -> Move Books from iTunes...

I know this seems sort of backwards, as you're trying to get the books to show up iniTunes, but after moving everything from iTunes to iBooks, all of my books and PDFs were available for syncing to my iPad in iTunes.

Best of luck!

Thanks moldcat. You solved the problem for me. Now my PDFs that I added to iBooks show up in the sync tab in iTunes. I really liked it better when I could just drag and drop from iTunes into my iPad, though.

I had a bit of a lengthy session first w/ Apple-IOS support and then, at her suggestion, with Mac Support. The end result is that this is indeed a known issue and the tech hopes that it will be dealt with soon. He has had 3 recent reports of the same thing and suggested that I send a note to apple.com/feedback to insure that the techs see it. I sent the below note, and suggest y'all do the same.

In the meantime, the work-around solution is to get a 3rd party app, like Adobe Acrobat, and use iTunes as a conduit to move the PDFs onto your iPad, etc.

Once you've installed the App from the App store, when the iPad is connected, go to the Apps Tab and click on the 3rd party app. In the box next to it you have the option to Add documents to the App, or you can click and drag them into the box. Voila!! PDFs on the Pad!

This is what I sent to the feedback page:

W/the changes to iTunes re: moving books & PDF's to iBooks & being entirely removed from iTunes, it's become impossible to manually move PDFs from my macbook to a shared iPad or my iPhone. I can still click & drag all of my tunes and videos to it, but no longer can I simply move PDFs. I know there are licensing issues w/book publishers, but I'm a student & get many PDFs as handouts from instructors. I like to put them onto my family's shared iPad & read while commuting. I can still do the old way of emailing them, but not when the file exceeds 25mg. Your tech gave me the work-around of using a 3rd Party app, like Adobe Acrobat, & using iTunes to add it to the app. That indeed worked, but now I have PDFs in 2 locations. What happened to Apple Simplicity? Please bring PDFs back into iTunes..

see above

This solved my problem. Apparently PDFs imported into iBooks must be placed in a collection other than the default collection "PDFs" before they will appear in iTunes for syncing.

DarkStar wrote:

If your still having trouble seeing Pdf's it's becuase some pdfs wont sync since they aren't

categorised?

In iBooks on Mavericks once you import vie the Menu>File>Add to Library, you should see it in the

PDF section under the Collections Tab.

Click on Authors Tab and then ctrl-click the pdf you've added, you should see this:

at first the Add to Collection will show None, but if you sellect New Collection or from Sellection

then you'll be promted to Name it which will showup under PDF insidebar:

It will no longer show up in PDFs but in all other gategories.

This will now show in your iTunes under Books and do not forget to check it so that it will sync to your iOS.

Don't forget to hit Apply in iTunes to sync the pdfs.

In iOS it will showup when you hit BOOKS tab and select from the given list in My case Yoga.

I'm seeing this problem and I think it has something to do with having multiple Apple ID's and being logged in on the iPad as a different ID to the ones I'm using in iTunes and iBooks. They all have to be the same, I think. However, it's really irritating that I can't just synch the pdf's and be done with it.

It took a while but I figured out how to get it to synch seamlessly. I'm running Mavericks and all software is up to date as of August 2014.

Like a canal, for water to flow all the gates have to be open. There appears to be three checkboxes in three locations you must manually activate.

(1) On the phone/pad, you make Settings>iBooks>synch books with mac or something of the sort...

(2) On the Mac, in iBooks, you go to preferences, check the box to automatically synch. Also, add some books to your mac iBooks library so you have something to send over.

(3) Quit and restart iTunes with your phone plugged in and connected to iTunes. Go to the books header in iTunes and check the FINAL box to synch books with your phone/other device.

Apple used to be masters of usability, thinking in terms of how to make a user goal a seamless process and the software was designed to work simply for the user (i.e., 1-3 above should be one clean step). But now we users are the ones that must conform to the software, not the other way round. Things are going downhill at Apple now that they see themselves as a luxury brand think we should all be kissing their boots for how "innovative" they used to be. The decline of Apple is a slow grinding process...

Came here for help then worked it out.
I haven't read all the posts so the solution may have been provided already...

This is with Mavericks, iPhone 4 iOS 7.1.2, iTunes 11.3 (54)....

Open iBooks > File... > Add to Library...
Add the PDFs u want... [The PDF should appear in iBooks with a "New" blue triangle in the upper right corner of the image]
If at the of the iBooks window u are in "All Books", click "Collections" to open the left side panel...
"Click and Drag" the PDFs u want on your iPhone to "Books" in the side panel... [These will now appear in iTunes under the iPhone tab "Books"]...

"Check" the PDFs u want on your iPhone and then click "Apply" on the bottom right hand side....DFs

"Syncing......."

DONE!

PDFs in iBooks on your iPhone.