Managing Adobe Reader files with iTunes - on your iPad or iPod Touch

This tutorial assumes you already have iTunes setup, you are logged into it with your Apple account, and your iPad has been synchronized to your iTunes account.  Also, this guide assumes you are using an iPad, but I believe the steps are the same for an iPod touch as well.

  1. Open up iTunes
  2. Plug-in your iPad
  3. Press the Alt key, click on the View menu, and then select Show Sidebar
  4. Getting to the Adobe Reader app on your iPad
    1. Select your iPad
      1. Selecting your iPad
    2. Click on Apps in the top middle of the screen
      1. Selecting Apps
    3. Scroll down and click on the Adobe Reader app
      1. Adobe Reader App
  5. To add files to your iPad
    1. Click on the Add button
    2. Navigate to the folder you want, hold the control key, and select the files you want to send to your iPad (they must be in pdf format)
    3. Maps
    4. Click Open (note you cannot upload folders to your iPad)
  6. To backup files from your iPad to your computer
    1. Click on the folder you want and click on the Save To… button
    2. Navigate to the folder you want to place the folder in (iTunes will create the folder inside of the folder you are selecting).
    3. Select Folder
    4. Click the Select Folder button (you do not need to type in anything, just click the button)
      1. At this point, if you were to navigate to your folder, you should see the folder you selected in iTunes, and then inside of that folder, the folder you selected to backup.
        1. Note: iTunes doesn't copy files from the folder you selected, it copies the folder and sub-items in it to a new folder that you selected.
  7. To create folders on your iPad, do the following:
    1. Launch the Adobe Reader application
    2. Click on Documents on the left side
    3. Click the Edit button in the top right
    4. Click on the Folder icon with a + sign on it
    5. Type in the folder name and click Save
  8. To move PDFs into a folder, launch the Adobe Reader app on your iPad (NOTE: you cannot drag the files inside of iTunes into the folders)
    1. Click on Documents on the left side
    2. Click the Edit button in the top right
    3. Find your PDFs and click on the little Circle icon next to it
        1. When you do that, it should turn red with a check mark
    4. Click on the icon with a diagonal arrow on a folder
    5. Click Move selected documents
    6. Select the folder you want to move the PDFs to

7 thoughts on “Managing Adobe Reader files with iTunes - on your iPad or iPod Touch

  1. John

    When I try to perform item #6, I get the message "[Folder name] could not be copied because you do not have permission to see its contents."

    Any thoughts on why this occurs?

    Reply
    1. Jack Post author

      Please make sure you have the ability to write to the folder you are trying to save to on Windows. If you are receiving errors on permissions, I would assume it is because you don't have the ability to write to a certain directory on your operating system.

      Hope this helps,
      Jack

      Reply
  2. Ally

    Thank you so much ! Finally, I was able to transfer my pdfs to my computer ! I also received the same message as the other person who commented, but then I tried to change the permisions on my iPod and it worked ! I was lucky.. I did it a bit randomly.. Oh well, thanks again !

    Reply
  3. Raji Tejnani

    I am trying to copy a folder in Adobe Reader in my ipad to my computer. But I get an error " "folder name" could not be copied because an error occurred. The required folder cannot be found."

    How can I solve this issue? Please help.

    Thanks.

    Reply
    1. Jack Post author

      Hi Raji,

      I'm not sure why you are seeing this issue. That sounds like there is a permissions issue on your machine. If you try creating a new folder, copying your PDFs into it, and then copying that over to the iPad, does that work?

      Jack

      Reply
  4. Plover

    I had this and solved it by renaming a few files. I had a document with ? in the name and I think renaming that one fixed it, or maybe it was the one with parentheses ( ) in the name.

    Reply

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