How to sync an iPhone with two different PCs

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If Santa left an iPhone in your Xmas stocking (or an iPod Touch, for that matter), you may still be wrestling with its syncing capabilities. Both the iPhone and the iPod Touch use iTunes to synchronise both music and 'info' - iTunes' term for appointments, contacts, and so on.

The problem is that if you use your home PC for music synchronisation, but your work PC for your calendar and contacts (probably with Outlook), it's difficult to avoid wiping one or the other types of content whenever you sync with either PC. Difficult, but not impossible -- here's how.

1. First, plug your iPhone (the instructions apply to the iPod Touch too, from here on in) into your work PC and fire up iTunes. Once the iPhone has been detected, select it in the Devices list, then click the Summary tab and disable the 'Automatically sync…' option (we'll enable it later).

2. Click Apply, then move to the Info tab. Tick the boxes for the 'Info' you want to sync - at least Contacts and Calendars if you use Outlook - then click Apply.

3. Click the Music tab and disable the 'Sync music' option. For this to work, it's essential that you don't have any music or playlists in iTunes on your work PC (or the PC you don't want to sync music with). Click apply and repeat these select/deselect steps for Ringtone, Photos, Podcasts and Video - deselect everything you don't want to sync with your work (or non-music) PC, essentially.

4. The last step is to sync your iPhone with your work PC - if a dialog box pops up complaining that the iPhone is already synced with another user account, click the Merge Info button.

5. When it comes to syncing the iPhone with your music collection (and anything else) on your home PC (or wherever the computer that contains your music is), just repeat steps 1 to 4. This time, however, you need to deselect all the options you previously selected on your work PC (everything on the Info tab, usually) and select everything you now want to sync on your home PC (Music, Photos, etc). Again, if you see the option to 'Merge info' when you connect your iPhone, click it.

That should be all there is to it, though you might need another sync with your work PC to put everything in place. From this point onwards, you'll be able to sync with both PCs without losing anything - and don't forget to re-enable the 'Automatically sync…' option you disabled in step 1.

Incidentally, if iTunes on your work PC shows that your iPhone has lots of free space and doesn't contain any music, don't worry -- iTunes has a glitch that prevents it from detecting music on an iPhone that's been synced from another computer.