Deleting older photos from iPad

My wife's mini iPad is full of photos from as far back as 2003. They are taking up over 4gb but it seems to be impossible to delete any that are more than a year old (the bin is 'greyed'). Why is this? Is there a solution? I leave the photography side of things to her, hence my ignorance.

Alwyn said:

My wife's mini iPad is full of photos from as far back as 2003. They are taking up over 4gb but it seems to be impossible to delete any that are more than a year old (the bin is 'greyed'). Why is this? Is there a solution? I leave the photography side of things to her, hence my ignorance.

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Hello Alwyn - the first generation iPad Mini was released in 2012, so photos dating to 2003 must have been transferred to the device, presumably via a sync w/ iTunes on a computer? So, please explain how your wife is managing her photos? Also, which iPad Mini model does she use and what iOS is installed - hopefully answers to these questions will help others respond more specifically. Dave

Thanks Dave,

I bought it on eBay in July 2013 and think it was fairly new. How can I check? It has iOS 9.3.5. When you say manage I'm not sure. At the moment sync all photos is unchecked. I tried changing that to selected albums and checked last import. I got 'This will remove all photos from your computer'. As I didn't want them removed from her iMac I cancelled. Did 'computer' mean the iMac or the iPad? If the latter that would solve the problem.

Hi Alwyn

What you ask is both highly sensible and difficult to achieve!

A crucial question is whether your wife has "iCloud Photo Library" enabled on her iPad. (found in Settings > Photos & Camera > iCloud Photo Library).

If Yes, then things are tricky. The recommended way is to disable this function, but that, too, brings problems (see links below).

If No, then the situation is easier. Open Photos on the iPad then:

Option 1. Click on Camera roll which should show all your photos. Choose Select and click on every photo you want to delete - the Trash can icon should be visible. Click that to delete. Even then, it will put them in the Recently Deleted Album in case you change your mind.

Option 2. Click on Albums. Choose an Album > Select > Delete

Now, if you have My Photo Stream enabled, you can delete from there in the same way, but it will delete from all your iOS devices, but leave the photos on your Mac (in Photos presumably unless you're using the older iPhoto). If My Photo Stream is not enabled, you can ignore this bit.

**If after trying Option 1 or 2, and Selecting a photo(s), the Trash icon does NOT show, this almost certainly means that these photos were placed on the iPad via sync with iTunes.**

Attach iPad via USB to the Mac. Click on the iPad icon and from the drop down, choose Photos. Click on the Sync box. Then Uncheck the Sync box. A message will come up saying "iTunes will no longer sync photos to the iPad - Do you want to keep or delete photos previously synced to your iPad?" Underneath are two boxes "Keep Photos" and "Remove Photos". The choices are self explanatory and "Removing Photos" is from the iPad only.

Sorry it's so long-winded, but it's a really difficult issue to sort out.

** I think this is the option that applies to you**.

These links are for info - not enormously helpful; more often stress the difficulties!

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-delete-photos-from-my-iPhone-but-keep-them-in-iCloud
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7596277?start=0&tstart=0
https://www.lifewire.com/delete-photos-from-ipad-1994634

Ian