Q: Unhelpful message: "iTunes has found purchased items"

If and when you do transfer the items from the device to your library, you will see what the items are as the progress bar indicates what is happening with the transfer.  Admittedly, if there are many songs involved, you may miss some, but you will certainly know the general nature of what these items are.

There are several possible causes for the lack of coordination between your device and the iTunes library.  Two prominent ones are:

• An Apple ID issue, involving a song or app purchased with a dfiferent ID.
• An application or app downloaded on the device that was never synced with iTunes.

I suspect that what it meant in this case was that the item was not on the hard drive but instead was in the cloud... but who knows? It doesn't say.

 

Actually,  it does say.  The items are on the device and not in your library.  Nothing to do with cloud.

Besides the examples goven by sberman, a common reason you get this message is that you deleted some songs from your library.  In case the deletion was unintentional, the next time you sync it gives you a chance to get them back.

If you say yes, the songs get put back into your library, and are extremely easy to find when you sort your library by Date Added.  It would hardly be worth the trouble to give you a list beforehand.

However, you are certainly entitled to your opinion.  If you wish to make an enhancement request to Apple, you can use the iTunes Feedback page.

Bronweg wrote:

 

Thank you for your reply. There is no record of any item having been added in Date Added. It is probable from examining the library that this is correct and that nothing indeed was added when clicking Transfer.

That does sound bug-gy.

The message you cite is unchanged from the "olden days" before redownloading was available, and getting it back from the device was your last chance to recover it.  Although I have never seen it think there was something to transfer when there wasn't, it is quite possible.

In iTunes, I clicked on the "Apps" icon at the top left, then on "App Store" at the top, then on "Purchased" on the right hand side", then on "Not in My Library".

And, lo and behold, there were some apps that had the iCloud symbol, i.e., that were not present locally in my apps library.

So I clicked on the iCloud symbol of all those apps, and it seemed to do that trick.

Thank you GabrielZ! Finally solved my problem...

I completely agree and find it really unhelpful.

I've always assumed that Apple wanted you to use iTunes the way i do. Keep everything on your hard drive, make playlists or smart playlists (i like smart playlists, often involving a rating), and then sync selected playlists to your devices so you can listen to them elsewhere.

When I'm on the train i listen and occasionally decide that there is a song i don't like any more. I select the song, mark it down to Zero rating, and then sometime later at home i'll check the playlist that says zero rating, and delete everything in it.

But the disliked song is still on my phone.

And next time i sync, iTunes gives me that unhelpful message.

And I sit there thinking 'is there a song still on my iPhone that i don't like, or is it a song that I've purchased while on the train?"

The fact is, iTunes could easily be more helpful in this respect, just by saying click to see which items (the way it does for items that couldn't be synced).

I take turns saying "Don't Transfer" and "Transfer", every time I start up iTunes.

I have nothing showing up in iTunes under app store/my purchases/not in my library.

In iTunes, when I select File/Devices, all options are grayed out.

This has been happening this time for a couple of weeks without me being able to find what it's looking for.

I went to iTunes and unchecked Sync Music on my iPhone.    After synchronizing and restarting iTunes, the error was gone.   I checked that again (it takes a long time to load all of my 30 GB of songs (probably because I compress them)), and started iTunes again.   The error is back.

So the problem is one or more songs.   I looked at "Recently Added" on my phone and saw an album I had loaded in iTunes.   Then I looked on iTunes and saw the same album - and a TV screen.    Ahh, it was a mp4 I added to iTunes.   It doesn't show up when I click on the TV screen in iTunes, but it is on my iPhone in the videos app.    I don't know if this is my problem though (why doesn't iTunes see it as a video?)

But the error says the song is on my phone, not on my computer.    How in the world do I find it - and if I find it, what do I do next?

And if I select "Transfer", the message comes up again next and every time I start iTunes.

Transfer doesn't work.

Last time this happened to me, I found a purchase "Not in My Library".   This time I didn't find one.

I removed all of my songs from my iPad, and loaded them again.

iTunes doesn't currently have this problem with my phone.