For those that are having trouble getting the new iBooks (Version 1.1+) to mix with PDFs, here’s 2 really simple ways to activate the “PDFs” tab and sync PDF files in iBooks on the iPad.
Sync PDFs as iBooks on iTunes
- Update iBooks to 1.1 if you haven’t done so yet
- Open iTunes and click on the “Books” tab under Library section
- Drag & Drop your PDFs right in iTunes while you’re in the Books tab
- Connect your iPad to your computer, click on “Books” within the iPad data sync window
- You’ll see the PDFs you just dragged and just simply Sync ‘em to your iPad
PDF via Email Method
- Send yourself an email with the PDF(s) attached
- Go to the Mail app (Not the browser) on the iPad and open the email you just sent
- Tap the PDF file listed to download
- Tap on it again to view the PDF
- Tap on the “Open In…” button on the top right and choose iBooks
- You now have the “PDFs” tab in iBooks
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to put them in the comments below or feel free to shoot me an email about it. And if you liked the the guide, please bookmark us or subscribe to our RSS feed (Or do it via Pulse News Reader) for future iPad news, guides, accessories review, giveaways and more!
Here’s a picture guide if you’re having trouble following:
I can’t believe we can’t side load the PDF files like they let us do the ePub books.
There also seems to be a cap on file size.
I loaded some Apple Cert books I have in the PDF format onto my iPad. Tried to open them in mail on the iPhone for transfer over and have them on both devices and I got an error that the file was too large. These were below 20mb.
Not cool at all.
Good Article, however it is worth noting that this will not work if Stanza is also installed. Stanza causes the first page of the document to be rendered as an image in the mail.
Left me quite confused this morning. There’s a thread of getsatisfaction about it
That explains a lot… Now I have removed Stanza (I hardly used it) but it still states that my PDF files are images and I can’t get it to work still. Have tried several mails and also a PDF file in Safari. I’m hoping you might have a tip?
I am having the same issue as well. I deleted stanza as well as another app cloudreader. next i restarted my ipad and I still cannot open these pdfs in in my mail and send them to ibooks. I think we are on our own little island where this is happening I cannot seem to find anyone else who has posted about the issue
Is it not easier to drag and drop them into iTunes and then sync?
Steve,
yes, it is easier to drop the file into iTunes BUT, the purpose of having an iPad is to be more mobile. When I am out on the road and can’t sync to my home computer, I can’t add the pdf to my iBooks. They can be read in mail but not in iBooks.
I too am having the same issue. I deleted Stanza and restarted. My iPhone 3GS is fine with the iBooks and pdf’s but my iPad doesn’t work. When I send pdf files to my iPad they often open up in the mail as an image and not as an attachment. As and image tapping it only allows saving or copying. Strange!! I wonder if restarting with both the home button and the on/off button will clear things out and allow me to do it.
Errr – I have upgraded everything, but I still cant get PDFs into my iBooks.
I cant drag them into books on 9.2 iTunes, and i notice that still says audiobooks.
And when I email it, mail automatically opens it and i get no chance to say ‘open in…’
In a way I’m glad I’m not the only one
I synced PDF files with iTunes and that works fine. I now have a PDF button in iBook, but on my iPad I still can’t save PDF files from my mail or Safari.. Which should have been one of the big improvements. Maybe Stanza left something behind after removal?
You don’t need to do so much coplicated thinghs to do for reading a pdf file in ipad or iPhone.
Just open itunes and select books category connect your device (iPad or iPhone) then just drag the pdf file to books category (below the popdcast) and then select your device then select books you want to sync then click sync that’s it now you can read book or pdf files on iPad and iPhone.
I still cannot get the PDF’s to show up on the phone. There is no PDF selection button in my iBooks app. They show up in iTunes after I drag and drop them into the app, but they don’t appear on the phone.
I had to send one as an email, open it with ibooks, and then the rest of the pdf’s appeared. After re-syncing the iphone, the emailed-pdf appeared in itunes, but the name now had a .pdf extension. All pdf’s that were dragged and dropped before emailing did not have a .pdf extension in the itunes window. I’m going to delete the duplicate pdf without the extension and exclaim… “It just works!”
I forgot to say doesn’t need any other apps like Stanza.
Deleting Stanza works for mail received afterwards. Mail received before deleting has already been converted by stanza so can’t be opened in iBooks. I also restarted the iPad, but I don’t know if that makes a difference.
thanks for the info, i didn’t know stanza caused the problem. after I uninstalled it, the pdf works for ibook. I hope stanza fix this.
I found this page by google search.
I want to try the approach of sync’ing selected PDFs to the iPad, BUT when I select that option I get an alert box saying: “Are you sure you want to sync books? All existing songs, movies and TV shows on the iPad “The-iPad” will be removed.” What the heck is the reason why all of my other assets have to be messed with just to be able to sync books??????????
I tried adding PDFs to my iTunes library and then dragging them to the iPad and that indeed copied the PDFs to the iPad and they show up when I select the books category in the iPad; BUT when I open iBooks on the iPad there is no Books / PDF selection. The PDFs are on the iPad in the books category but they’re invisible to iBooks 1.1.
BTW I’m using iTunes 92.f1 (45).
At any rate yet another crock – what the hell is going on with Q/A? It’s not like there’s multiple different iPad OS versions out in the field, and their’s only 6 hardware configurations!
Oops! I just noticed that the iBooks is accessing the internet now for some minutes and after about 5 minutes – I had transferred 52 PDFs over – the PDF selection simply appeared! Now all of the PDFs are visible. I wonder what iBooks was doing – probably trying to do the iBook equivalent of “Whisper Sync” for all of the PDFs.
At any rate I take back my comments above and can now say that simply dragging the PDFs from the iTunes library books category to the iPad indeed is sufficient to get the books into iBooks – IF you open iBooks and wait for a goodly while if you’ve transferred a mess of iBooks over.
I was fighting with the samenproblem. But “waiting” did not help me. And I reinstalled iBooks. And then all synced PDFs appeared in iBooks.
Is there any way to assign categories to the PDF files? That is one of the tabs on the bottom of iBooks but all my PDFs are “Uncategorized”.
You can do this in iTunes. You just change the genre (right click > get info > info). If you add the ‘category’ column you should see what you wrote in genre.
compare to download book, transferrd pdf words display much smaller, I need to zoom in to read and therefore flap pages become more inconvenice.how can I change the size of words?
other than this, this app is very good.
I bought iPad principally for business( wonderful piece of kit in any event)
I want to download PDF into iBooks and have the same facilities as if it was a book
- bookmark
- key words
- highlight text
- copy and paste into notes or iPad presentation
Any solution?
I use Dropbox to load PDFs on my iPad. I just put the files in my dropbox folder and use the Dropbox app to load them up. There is a button in the top right corner and push open in iBooks.
Different problem, I drag PDF into itunes and sync. All is fine. Now if/when I delete the origional PDF from the PC, iTunes keeps warning that the file no longer exist… can’t the PDF’s on the iPad and in iTunes be consolidated like music? where are the PDFs saved in the itunes music folder?
Dear all ipad users,
I went to the store yesterday, and tried to access into my gmail account to open
some pdf file, but the browser just shut it down by itself and back to main window.
So my question is… is this normal when u using the ipad ? Even the staff from the store
also didn’t know any solution to this, can someone please explain?
Hello Ein,
I have the same issue with PDF as your. How did you fix it.
I have a quick question for someone with more knowledge than myself. I love Ibooks on my Iphone 4, when I receive a pdf via email I put it into Ibooks that is great, but….at some point in time I will want to email a pdf that is in Ibooks to someone, can this be done, and if it can how….I can not figure this one out.
Help….
I have Stanza installed and the latest version of iBooks and I have successful y imported my PDF file by dragging and dropping them on iTunes with no problem.
Thank you very much!! It’s totally working!!
Sir.
I’ve just synched a number of books using the drag and drop method. What happened is that all the books I had in my iBooks reader were deleted and only the latest synched were left. Can anyone explain why is this happening and whether there is any possibility of retrieving the lost books?
“I had to send one as an email, open it with ibooks, and then the rest of the pdf’s appeared. After re-syncing the iphone, the emailed-pdf appeared in itunes, but the name now had a .pdf extension. All pdf’s that were dragged and dropped before emailing did not have a .pdf extension in the itunes window. I’m going to delete the duplicate pdf without the extension and exclaim… “It just works!”
It does just work – (many thanks Jason!) – but WHY apple? WHY??!?!?!?
Does anyone know where the ipad stores those PDF in the file system? I am using PhoneDisk to transfer a lot of my files and would like to add PDF directly to the iPad/iBooks.
I’ve been using the PDF viewing for some time on my iPad and iPod Touch. However, this morning when I opened iBooks on my iPad, which had a PDF still open, it “jittered” and then my entire PDF library was gone. So iBooks lost my PDF library (even the PDF and Books buttons in the title bar have gone away). Has anyone else seen this behavior?
I just noticed the same thing on my iPad today. Looks like Apple removed the PDF functionality. Damn.
Same problem with me all PDF saved just disappeared one by one then PDF button gone as well. It happened t.Bree times now. Any solution?
This may sound simple, but how exactly do you get the ‘books’ tab? I have got the ibooks app, but no ‘books’ tab!
Great article! Thanks for sharing!
I hope Apple would find a way to make folder in the iBooks or PDF to help sort files out.
Cheers
I cannot open my PDF files in my ibooks
I wonder if I can publish and sell my books of photos created from Aperture on iBooks?.
Can I create a library on iBooks with restricted access in which customers can see my library of books and buy them from there?