Fetch Annotations (exptl), is it working?

[higlider]

I get date and percentage read along with any bookmarks, but only occasionally for a few books. I read a book to 100%, go to Home, connect to Calibre, Fetch annotations, and then look at the book and it has no annotations. What is the trick to get this to work? Do you have to completely turn off the Kindle to get it to store the annotation data, or what?

This is a $79 Kindle bought in Dec 2011, Version Kindle 4.0.1.

Why is the Fetch Annotations option labeled as Experimental? This is a really useful feature to have the annotations in the library, especially if mulltiple readers mess each other's last page read info online, because Calibre will keep track of it. But it is driving me crazy because it seems to only work sometimes and I can't figure out any pattern to what makes it work. Thanks.

[higlider]

Why is it that Fetch Annotations doesn't add any notation to books that have had reading activity? Is there anyone out there successfully using Fetch Annotations? If so, do you always get annotations added to books you are reading? Are there devices or book formats for which it doesn't work? Maybe the author of Calibre can comment on this? Please. Thanks.

[kovidgoyal]

There is a reason it is marked experimental. It doesn't work and isn't maintained anymore, since amazon keep changing their annotations format with new firmware versions.

[pchrist7]

Hi Higlider

Have a K3 and use Fetch annotations a lot.
Keep in mind that the Kindle is responsible for writing data to the mbp files with correct reading progress. This can fail ! IF your kindle clock is out of sync this could happen. Also some books might have issues.
However here's what my rutine is:
Read, read, read and get to the end of the book.
THEN I put K3 to sleep using power button, to ensure reading status is updated.
Wake up K3, use the back button to get back to what menu I want.

IF there are problems with reading status, you'll see it right away as the back button will NOT exit the book, but jump further towards the start of the book.

I DID have a few books that couldn't handle the rutine above.
A dirty hack (not recommended) was to open the book again, fast turn pages until the end, then press Home, Menu, Settings, Restart, and for some reason the mbp file was update correctly.

As Kovid states different Kindle models with different firmware versions can have a huge impact. A shame the function is not maintained, but so far I would say that in 99,9 % of my many books it works like a charm.

Cheers, Per

[higlider]

Get Annotations works for me when the book on the Kindle is a Mobi file from Calibre, but not when it is an AZW file. That is the pattern I have observed.

[higlider]

Just noticed that after I carefully downloaded metadata for all my books that "Fetch Annotations" wiped it out on books I had been reading. Can't Fetch Annotations just put it at the end, and not wipe out the book description, but replacing any previous Last Page Read and Bookmark information?

Question: When you create a catalog what is "Recently Read" category based on, what is it looking at?

[CheriePie]

I recently tried out the Fetch Annotations feature following the instructions provided in this forum at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=817749

When I got to the very last step (#9) to Confirm the Changes, I noticed that my Notes and Marks were now blank. However when I connected my Kindle Fire back to my PC, I discovered that the updated MPB file, which you transfer back in step 7, actually gets saved to a subdirectory of the author's name beneath the documents directory, instead of in the documents directory itself where the actual book is stored. I moved that mpb file back to documents, deleted the subdirectory, and all my marks were back. Yay!

Will have to wait and see how it all works out trying to sync my notes & marks this way from my Kindle Fire to my Kindle 2 but at least I found that my existing marks weren't deleted after all, which looked to be the case at first.

Just thought I'd mention this in case it helps anyone here.

~Cherie

[picco]

Is there any device out there for which this feature works?
That would be pretty much the only reason to buy an ebook reader:
being able to annotate, and sync annotations back and forth with a PC.