How to undo an iBooks conversion and revert back to iTunes

DId you follow my advice? Without you telling us what you did we cannot help you.

I had the same (PDFs not back in iTunes, just Books and Audiobooks) on one out of 3 Macs and I solved it by doing the above mentionned iTunes Library restore.

Duh. Itseems I didn't. Sorry for the additional trouble. I opened iTunes with the saved library from yesterday evening (right before the iTunes update) and the PDFs are back.

Thank you very much.

Odd, just looked at mine and it has sections for Audio, eBook and PDF's. I didn't do anything other than upgrade and redo my procedure so not sure what the problem is.

Current process I use is:

osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to quit'

pkill com.apple.BKAgentService

sudo rm -r /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc

[remove iBooks with AppZapper or similar utility, you may need to enable deleting Apple apps in the preferences]

rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService

rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

open /Applications/iTunes.app

As always, it is worth ensuring you have a backup using something like SuperDuper or CCC first just in case something goes awry.

Well it finally worked for me...sort of. I tried several methods recommended which in summary was:

1. Killed book agent (was't running ...but even so).
2. Copied iBooks, all the data files, 2 x Prefs files & the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc + /Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService + /Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX to an external drive via Finder.
3. Used AppZapp to delete iBooks & /Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX but had to use Finder to delete the rest.
4. Restarted & iTunes still wouldn't recognise the Books (even though there was still a Books folder in the iTunes Music library).
5. Removed iTunes Helper from my Account Login Startup items.
6. Deleted the entire content of my Music/iTunes folder & replaced it with a backup from a few days earlier just before I upgraded to Yosemite (from Mountain Lion).
7. Restarted & iTunes still wouldn't recognise the Books.
8. Then I had a light bulb moment & physically disconnected the external drive where I had copied all the iBooks stuff in pt 2 above; restarted & lo & behold iTunes suddenly found all my books.
9. I "double-proved" this theory by quitting iTunes, reconnecting the external hard drive, reopening iTunes only to find the books had disappeared again & iTunes was once again telling me to convert them to iBooks.
10. So I've now got rid of all the old iBooks files (actually copied them off to yet another external drive which I hardly ever turn on).

I haven't tried to import more ePubs just yet or upload to my iPad...will do that tomorrow & see how I go.

1 issue I have as well is that when I try to use the Authors view in iTunes, it hangs; have to Force Quit, but the Books & Book List views seem to work OK now even though the View dropdown still refers to 'Audiobooks'.

Agreed! It really puzzles me whoever who came up with this even use a Mac to start with.

It just doesn't make any sense at all. I sincerely hope Apple would wake up.

Mark, I am running latest version of Itunes and now 10.11 El Capitan, but I have noticed if I try to trash

delete /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc

I get a message that I can't because “com.apple.BKAgentService.xpc” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by OS X

Never saw that previously. Have you any suggestions how I can override this so i can get my books/pdfs back again into Itunes.

I am guessing that this is something new with El Capitan, because Yosemite didnt cause this issue. But I did read that iBooks wasnt one of the securely protected apps recently online. Maybe that is incorrect also?

Regards

Craig

Question: did you see a permissions or authentication box pop up asking for your system password?

Hi there,

No permission prompt, just a message box saying it could not delete it as it was an OS X system required file

“com.apple.BKAgentService.xpc” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by OS X

I should say I was going into the relevant folder and selecting the file to then try to Trash it, rather than conducting the the instructions to run from within Terminal.

I would be interested to see if anyone has been successful in return their books to Itunes since updating both Itunes and OS X to El Capitan official release.

I wondered if there was a block to the deletion of the file caused by the new SIP (System Integrity Protection) built into El Capitan?

http://www.macworld.com/article/2948140/os-x/private-i-el-capitans-system-integr ity-protection-will-shift-utilities-func…

I can confirm that the problem is caused by the new SIP (System Integrity Protection) built into El Capitan. I had been told before that iBooks was not affected at this level, but it would appear that Apple changed their minds on that one.

So....

1. quit iTunes
2. kill the process com.apple.BKAgentService
3. delete /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc
4. use appzapper to remove iBooks
5. delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService
6. delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX
7. empty the trash
8. restart iTunes

For me to action the instruction at stage 2., I had to disable SIP first.

Boot into Recovery Mode using CMD + R, then select Utilities from top menu

Select Terminal, and then type following and Enter

csrutil disable

Then Reboot system

Then go back and try Stage 2. (I'm sure you can probably do all this from within Terminal in the first place, but I'm not that knowledgeable)

Follow stages through until stage 7. I then rebooted again before trying Stage 8. just to be sure, and can report ALL IS BACK AND OK!!! 🙂

****By the way, I personally didn't find the listed item in stage 6. (maybe because I hadn't actually opened iBooks??)****

For my own system safety, I then chose to boot back into Recovery mode using CMD + R, back into Terminal and then typed csrutil enable, to enable SIP again to protect from the potential nasties.

Hope this helps anyone who has encountered problems since the recent El Capitan release.

In case anyone needs it. The process mostly still works on El Capitain and the latest iTunes.

I say mostly as I can no longer do 'sudo rm -r /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc'

but otherwise it is fine and iTunes still recognises my books.

1. osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to quit'
2. pkill com.apple.BKAgentService
3. sudo rm -r /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BookKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com. apple.BKAgentService.xpc
4. [remove iBooks with AppZapper or similar utility, you may need to enable deleting Apple apps in the preferences]
5. rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService
6. rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX
7. sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*
8. open /Applications/iTunes.app

(Step 3 no longer works as OSX refuses to let me delete it, the purpose was to ensure that the service could not be restarted, so I use Simon from Dejal software and if the service is running it does steps 2,5 & 6. So far it's been fine and has not restarted itself, so maybe you could add the 'pkill' as a startup script)

(Step 4 is manual, the rest can be done from the terminal)

As always, it is worth ensuring you have a backup using something like SuperDuper or CCC first just in case something goes awry.

Mark I found if you disable SIP as I have detailed in my last post, freedom to delete is returned.

USERS BEWARE: I am not sure if with the latest version of EC and Itunes 12.3.1.23 that this iBooks method is still working.

I have encountered issues myself and so have others with not being able to access Itunes account.

It seems to work fine with accessing books/music etc that is there, but has an effect on being able to login to Itunes account if logged out, or if still logged in, you cannot access your Itunes account. Not sure if any of the file removal has an affect on this, or totally unrelated.