Here’s a horror story from the field, made un-horrible with a just few steps:
You buy a new computer – and your iPhone is synched to the old one. Bummer. It can only belong to one iTunes library and iTunes now wants to erase your iPhone.
Now what? These simple steps will move your iPhone to a new “home”.
When you connect it to a new iTunes library it says “Hey, this is a new phone! Do you want me to automatically sync Apps, Contacts and Calendars? This is fine if it’s truly a new phone with no info on it. But it it’s a well used iPhone there’s lots of other data that you don’t want to loose.
Here’s the trick…
First make sure that other data you want to sync TO the iPhone is complete on the new computer, i.e. addresses, calendar, music, podcasts, photos, etc.
Second, take a screen shot of each of your iPhone screens, email them to yourself, then delete them from your Camera Roll. You’ll need them later.
Third, before you connect your iPhone to the computer, open iTunes. Under the iTunes menu select Preferences. Click the Devices icon in the Toolbar. Click the checkbox next to ”Prevent iPhones and iPods from automatically syncing to this computer.“ Click OK.
Now you can connect your iPhone to the computer. After it shows in devices, select it.
1. right click on the iPhone and select Transfer Purchases.
2. right click and select Back Up.
Now you have a backup on your new computer!
Quit iTunes.
Restart iTunes.
You’ll be asked if you want to setup your iPhone as a new one or Restore from a backup. Since you now have a backup, you can choose Restore from a backup.
When this is complete your iPhone will have all (with a couple caveats below) it’s data restored, plus be now paired with this instance of iTunes.
Caveats: the only music, podcasts, etc. that will sync back to the phone are those that exist on this new computer. (See First above.) The other thing you’ll have to do is rearrange your App locations. Here’s where those screen shot you emailed to yourself come in handy for setting up your preferred App arrangement.
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Wyn Matthews is new to the FoleyPod Digital-Life Coach Blog. He comes to us with decades of Mac and PC troubleshooting experience, and is an expert on both systems.
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