iTunes no longer sees my books in iBooks and refuses to sync them to iPhone

[baryon]

So for a long time, I had used iBooks on my Mac and I synced the books to my iPhone and it worked fine. I haven't done this in a while and now I want to read some books, and to my surprise, they're all gone from my iPhone. So I go to iTunes, into my iPhone settings and click the "Books" tab, and it only shows 3 books that I purchased. Everything else is missing, even though I have hundreds of books in iBooks on Mac.

So iTunes stopped recognizing my non-purchased books in iBooks, and therefore won't sync them to my iPhone. What can I do?

iPhone 4S with iOS 7
Syncing through USB (WiFi sync doesn't work)
MacBook Pro with El Crapitan
Latest iTunes

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

I have no problem syncing non-purchased books or pdf files from a Macbook Pro with El Capitan to an iPhone 4S with iOS 9.3.2

Either your need to upgrade your iPhone to a newer version of iOS, or your are mis-using the iTunes interface.

 

[baryon]

Hi,

I have no problem syncing non-purchased books or pdf files from a Macbook Pro with El Capitan to an iPhone 4S with iOS 9.3.2

Either your need to upgrade your iPhone to a newer version of iOS, or your are mis-using the iTunes interface.

The books that are in iBooks are simply not showing up in iTunes. There's something wrong between the communication with iBooks and iTunes. It's not even related to the iPhone since iTunes doesn't see the books, even if I upgraded my iPhone, iTunes wouldn't see the books.

It definitely used to work a few months ago, with this same computer, this same OS, and this same iPhone with this same version of iOS. So no need to upgrade anything. I also didn't change any settings related to iTunes or iBooks lately, so it can't be about settings.

I was wondering more along the lines of deleting some .plist files, getting iTunes to re-check for new books in iBooks, clearing some caches, or the usual stuff. I just don't know what to try.

The whole idea is that it used to work on this same setup, so there's no reason it shouldn't work the way I have things set up right now.

 

[Bruno09]

See if this can help :

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

And : https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205751 (iOS 9.3 required)

 

[baryon]

See if this can help :

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

And : https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205751 (iOS 9.3 required)

Thanks! I'll try this out, but I've also found a workaround that works very reliably: simply drag & drop books to Dropbox and read them from there (for anyone else with the same problem).

 

[MrkJensen]

Thanks! I'll try this out, but I've also found a workaround that works very reliably: simply drag & drop books to Dropbox and read them from there (for anyone else with the same problem).

Have same issue, can't sync with my iPhone and iPad from my RMBP all run latest software. -I noticed it after the latest update of iTunes which by the way gets more and more strange. But I just moved everything to EverNote and OneNote as that works like a charm. Think the magic of Apple is slowly fading...

 

[baryon]

Have same issue, can't sync with my iPhone and iPad from my RMBP all run latest software. -I noticed it after the latest update of iTunes which by the way gets more and more strange. But I just moved everything to EverNote and OneNote as that works like a charm. Think the magic of Apple is slowly fading...

Yeah I've started using Dropbox to send my e-books to my iPhone, it works fine. At least it's reliable, and I can trust that it will keep working as I expect. Also no need to WiFi sync or to connect the clunky USB cable, so it's actually better.