PDFs saved in iBooks keep disappearing

I ve lost so many good books and documents with this junk app. 😟

i wish i can remove iBooks from my device

I've had this problem for some time. I think updating any of my devices causes iBooks to make my recently saved PDFs vanish across all devices. Yet much older PDFs remain synced across all devices. Its like it doesn't like certain versions of PDF after an update, and they vanish across all devices that are synced to the same iCloud account. I gave up re-downloading the PDFs (and just kept bookmarks in the browser) until I found a work around or Apple fixed it. But what I did discover was when I downloaded a PDF of interest I had previously had saved, it re-appered in the Collection I had created without me needing to move it. It's like it new it was the same file and new where it was previously stored.

Yes I tried signing in and out, and forced restart of iPhone 7+ etc., but the thing I think that triggered them to all magically reappear now was to toggle off both the "Sync Bookmarks and Notes" and "Sync Collections" then wait a minute, then toggle both on. Then after a few minutes all my PDFs appeared in the Collections on the device I did the toggling on. What's even more quirky about this, is I had the same issue on my iPad and Mac with them vanishing as well, as I sync iBooks across all my devices, yet magically on my iPad and Mac, all the collections reappeared once my iPhone had resynced and resolved itself. I'm not 100% certain it was just the toggling as I had previously tried loads of things from other searches and one of those could taken a while to kick in. But anyway, all my numerous PDFs are back in all their Collections.

I am just beside myself with anger. My life's work depends on the PDFs I have stored in my devises. I wonder if Apple reads these Support Communities issues. With all their resources, why in the **** **** don't they fix these severe problems? Do they **** care? I work very, very hard on the PDFs that I create, and I have many. I HAD many before Apple Books silently, quietly, inexplicably DISAPPEARED them. I am so lividly ticked, I can't see straight. THIS IS JUST A **** APP! Can't they get just THAT right??

I guess the only alternative would be to use the adobe app. From what I have determined though, once the pdf's are gone, they are gone. That is, unless you are syncing to icloud, which I unfortunately do not. Odd thing is, I had organized all my pdf's into collections (manuals, electronics, work, etc...) it maintained all the collection information, just all the data is gone. Apple really $hit the bed on this one. User data should not be lost as a result of a product upgrade.

this is indeed a very grave and annoying problem. ibooks is constantly reordering my documents when I open it and arbitrarily deletes files over and over again...I now reimported a file for the third time and it still keeps deleting. The sorting order also seems to be a complete mess ! Apple what are you doing ?????

All of my pdf files have disappeared from my devices, I had several hundred pdf files on my ipad which used to be automatically synced on all my devices. These files have been collected over long years and they are extremely valuable to my. I’m totally shocked and I’ve completely lost confidence in iOS devices.

I will continue to search for my files, but it’s now time to move to android.

I use to have the same problem. However if I follow the following steps all missing PDFs do Reappear magically. It’s annoying but at least I have access to the files.

Turn off iBooks in iCloud on iPad

Reboot iPad

Turn on iBooks in iCloud on iPad

Launch iBooks

for me this works all the time. I am running the latest release of iOS 11.3

in the FILES application that lists your files in the iCloud:

• open a PDF
• in the right upper corner choose the icon of the square (box) with the arrow pointing up and choose
  • Open in iBooks
  • the pdf will now open in iBooks
• in the left corner choose the icon of the square (box) with the arrow pointing up and then choose

  Copy to iBooks

Your pdfs will now be saved in the iBooks app.

This has been happening to me for a few years now and it is SO annoying!!!! Apple please fix this!!!!!

I am having exactly the same issues!! Driving me insane redownloading the same pdf's. But like you said when I do the go into the category where I saved them. Ayer trying a million things the other day (I am not sure what actually worked?) they all magically reappeared again. But alas today they have once again disappeared. 😖 I did just do another phone update though. Silly me. I would love to know how to fix this?

I saved several PDF travel documents into iBooks on my iPhone 6. Twice they disappeared. Thank goodness I still had the documents in my email. I would reload them into iBooks, and then poof they would disappear again. I finally gave up.

When I came home, I check iBooks on my MacBook, and the PDF files are there, but not on my iPhone. I can't even find them in iCloud.

I've checked everything that was mentioned on this thread, and everything seems to be in order as far as logged onto iTunes, sync is turned on, and hide iCloud books is not toggled on.

Yes, I keep having the same issue as well. PDFs keep disappearing no matter how many times I add them again. I have been taken screenshots to document that they are there. When I look later they are gone across all devices. I have verified all of the things you have too. There is a huge bug. I’ve finally just stopped using it as a pdf repository because it’s not reliable. I’m using Adobe now. I have noticed it seems to be isolated to PDFs I’ve loaded in the last year or so. Everything else in the past seems to be there as normal.

I had the same issue. Rebooting used to work & now it doesn’t. Chatted with 3 people & they keep trying to send me old publications to fix an issue wasting my time. I believe they’re afraid to say they screwed up & can’t fix it.

I have the same problem with iBooks. The above fix of disabling iCloud for iBooks and then re-enabling after reboot used to work, but even that’s stopped work now and I am running an iPad Air 2 128GB with iOS 11.3. I have now given up with using iBooks to save PDFs and using iOS Adobe Acrobat app instead. Latter appears more reliable, and you can organise your documents by folder, rename etc.

Not sure exactly, I’m a real Apple novice, but my iCloud kept turning off as soon as I downloaded from the cloud, so therefore they wouldn’t copy down. I think the help man got me to copy them quickly back up to the cloud before the iCloud drive switched off again.

It did take 3.5 hours to resolved, but my pdf’s are on my iPad, phew 😅

I did mentioned there are hundreds of people with this problem, but apparently they have not had many people ringing about the problem. I was one of the 1st to speak to the helpdesk with this issue in Europe. Maybe you should ring them up as well, I did it by booking a phone call.

Jeanne