Sync iBooks from iPad to Mac

Thanks Ivan H. Your suggestion for archiving the Device backups in iTunes worked great. It's a neat little trick. Much better than my old way.

Unfortunately iPad/iBooks did not completely sync to Mac/iBooks using your methods. I only have 1 Apple account so that's not it. Purchased books are recognized and transfer over just fine. None of the non-purchased PDFs sync. In iTunes sidebar, where the iPad is listed, I click on Books and ALL the books on the iPad are listed. So I know (at least I think I know) that iTunes has them. It's just seems to be unwilling/unable to send them to iBooks on the Mac.

I did this "If you connect the iPad to your Mac's iTunes and do File > Devices > Transfer Purchases then they should copy over to your Mac (that should copy PDFs and epubs that are in the iBooks app, not just ibooks)." The transfer started iTunes said there was 313 items to transfer. After about 40 file transfer I got a message that 'that the start up disk didn't have anymore memory'. I had to quit the process and none of the transferred data was saved. All I want to transfer is the pdf's from my ipad to my iphone. I don't want to transfer any of the game information, which is what was transferring. How can I transfer only the iBook information? Thank you

Regarding iOS Device backup archives:

Avoid keeping more than one archived backup per iOS device on your Mac. It's a full backup and takes up a lot of precious space. Move them to external drive. (You may want to keep some monthly, quarterly or annual backups.)

For iPad-iBooks sync to Mac-iBooks (version 1.0), via iCloud:

I found some other bugs, so this could be one of the bugs.

b.t.w. I presume that you are using Mavericks and iOS 7 with their latest updates.

Try this (at your own risk):

On your Mac, open Disk Utility and under First Aid, Verify Disk (and Repair Disk, if needed) and Verify Permission (and Repair Permission, if needed). Do a SMC reboot on the Mac.

On iPad, do a backup, archive it, do another backup. then

Either: a.) go Settings > General > Reset All Settings.

Or b.) Alternatively and most drastically, go Settings Erase All Content and Settings. then restorre the iPad from the archived backup. Hopefully, the iBooks indexes will be rebuilt.

You may also consider downloading a pdf file from the Internet to your iPad . Give us the link and your procedure how that pdf can't be seen from your Mac-iBooks. I'll try and see what's wrong.

I am sort of a novice at this back up transfer stuff. I am not using Maverick. I have an older Mac mini running 10.6.8.3. An iPad2 iOS 7.1 and iPhone 5s iOS 7.1. Kids am able to see the collections under the iBooks on the iPhone but they are empty. I hope this helps. I will see if I can figure out how to sent a link. I might be a couple of days. Thank you for your help.

I'm using OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks on a brand new Mac Mini and iOS 7.1 on the iPad 2.

I tried your idea of Reset All Settings on the iPad (after backing it up) but that didn't help with iBook syncing. I'm not desperate enough yet to try Erase All Content and Settings.

Next I tried your idea of downloading a PDF on the iPad using Safari, moving it to iBooks, then doing an iTunes sync. From iTunes I did a File>Devices>Transfer Purchases from iPad. Then in iBooks on the Mac I did a File>Move Books from iTunes. It worked!! That one and only one PDF synced from the iPad-iBooks to Mac-iBooks. But all my other PDFs on the iPad are not syncing.

So I tried another experiment to see if I could learn more about what does/doesn't work. In iPad-iBooks, I emailed myself one of the PDFs that is not syncing, then deleted it from iPad-iBooks. I did a sync with iTunes and saw that PDF remove itself from the iTunes-Books list. Using the iPad I moved the PDF from email back to iBooks and did another sync in iTunes. It popped back into iTunes and now this PDF also syncs to Mac-iBooks. It appears there is something different with new PDF downloads vs previous downloads. So syncing is still not totally working.

I'd email all my old collections if there was a way to do it in bulk. But with over 100, I'm not going to email them one at a time.

Next I tried your idea of downloading a PDF on the iPad using Safari, moving it to iBooks, then doing an iTunes sync. From iTunes I did a File>Devices>Transfer Purchases from iPad. Then in iBooks on the Mac I did a File>Move Books from iTunes. It worked!! That one and only one PDF synced from the iPad-iBooks to Mac-iBooks. But all my other PDFs on the iPad are not syncing.

Good to hear some progress. (Email has a problem that the PDFs may have a new Creation Date.)

Try to create a new Collection on the iPad and put a few PDFs in the Collection, then see if the new Collection appears on the Mac and if the PDFs appears on the new Collection on the Mac.

That's all I could think of. Sorry guy, can't help much.

I gave up on pdfs via ibooks.

I now use google drive to store and read all my pdfs. It makes life a lot easier until Apple gets its act together.

I was struggling with this issue and finally got it to work, so I thought I'd post in case it helps someone else here. Basically, I followed the instructions provided by King_Penguin, with detailed steps as follows:

1) Make sure you're signed in with the same Apple ID on both Mac (Mavericks) and iPad

2) iTunes: File > Devices > Transfer Purchases

3) Mac iBooks: File > Move Books From iTunes in the iBooks app on your Mac

4) iPad: Settings > iBooks, toggle off Sync Bookmarks and Sync Collections

5) soft reboot iPad (hold Home + Power for 10s)

6) iPad: Settings > iBooks, toggle on Sync Bookmarks and Sync Collections

7) iTunes > Preferences > Devices: right click and archive existing iPad backup

8) plug iPad into Mac via USB

9) iTunes > select iPad in left sidebar > Backup Now

10) iTunes > select iPad in left sidebar > select Books tab across top > check Sync Books and All Books > click Apply at bottom right

11) Now use the Sync button at bottom right in iTunes

This procedure successfully transferred different non-purchased PDFs I had on Mac to iPad and from iPad to Mac, preserving Collections, i.e. PDFs in iBooks Sync between Mac and iPad is now working via iTunes.

If only this would work via iCloud I'd be a happy camper.

I went to the Apple store. I don't need all the pdf's so I am going to email the ones I need to myself. When I opened the PDF in iBooks the PDF was filed in the collection where if originated.

I had the same problem trying to transfer an ebook /PDF file I did not purchase from ibooks on my ipad but this solution worked for me. Thank you for the tip.

I finally got it to work after manually syncing it into your Mac's iTunes, which automatically syncs it to iBooks on your Mac. Below, find a great resource which helped me successfully import PDFs to iBooks, which then syncs to all of my devices!

http://miapple.me/fixing-ibooks-not-syncing-pdf-files-epub-books-mac-ipad-iphone /

thanks.great great article!i hope with iOS 8 and yosemite all these syncing issues will be solved.really frustrating not to sync via iCloud your pdf but via iTunes.

thanks for the answer 'transfer purchases' is way misleading...

Many thanks. Your first solution worked for me

Note - even though the menu item refers to Transfer Purchases, it seems to transfer anything downloaded into my iBooks app on my iPad, not just purchases.