Kindle not indexing books?
 

Is there a way to force my kindle to index the books? I have 37 books on my kindle that I put on there about three days ago, but when I do a search from the home menu it shows that none of the books have been indexed :(

I believe you can force a book into indexing on the screen that shows they have not been indexed. Clicking on a book begins the process.

That didn't seem to work :(

So far there are two things I'm not happy about with my kindle, this ridiculous indexing problem, and the ghosting from the previous page. The ghosting I can live with, but searching my books is a must! Maybe I should return it.. The books have had plenty of time to index, and I've tried everything I can think of to make this happen, but to no avail. Did you know the users manual does not even have the word "index" in it? Unbelievable :smack:

:help:

May I jump in here. I have a similar problem.

For the last six weeks, I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo on my K2 -- typically reading in half-hour bursts a couple of times a day. Yet when I try to do a search, it's still telling me that the book's not indexed.

I haven't had this problem with any other book. Generally, I can do a search the first time I open a book.

Any ideas why this happening with this particular title?

I'm dredging from deep memory - but I think a similar issue was brought up on a Battery Life Issue thread - indexing running down a battery. Anyways - someone mentioned the format of a book (and also the size) affecting the indexing. Are the non-indexed books Kindle books or from a PD site? If non-Kindle, you may want to find the older thread for clues as to indexing being affected by book format.

Now you mention it, the book in question was downloaded from a PD site. As far as I remember, all my other books were purchased from Amazon.

I'll hunt around for those older threads you mentioned.

Thanks.

Most of my books ARE from the amazon store. I just checked, and the books were all ordered between Jul. 30th and Aug. 4th. None of them have been indexed.

I really don't know what to do about this.. This does not make me want to recommend the kindle to my friends though, that's for sure..

At this point - give Amazon CS a call. You may have a faulty unit that needs replacing.

I got it wrong. I previously said only one of my books wasn't indexed. I now see that 16 out of 17 of the books currently on my Kindle are un-indexed. These are a mixture of Amazon books and titles downloaded from public-domain sites,

So, I'm in much the same position as N3wb. It would be nice to find a solution.

I finally got the books to all index!

Reading on another forum, I found that holding the sleep switch for about 20 seconds resets the Kindle. I copied all the files on the Kindle to my computer and then deleted them on the Kindle, this might not have been necessary. Then I reset the Kindle and put all of the books back on. The books started indexing immediately and (I did this last night) now they are all indexed.

N3wb,

I'll try your suggestion when I have time -- perhaps later today. It will also be a good opportunity to get rid of some old stuff I'm not likely to read again.

By the way, you say that the books started indexing immediately. How can you tell? Does some sort of icon or message appear while it is indexing? I don't recall seeing anything like that.

If you go to the home screen, type something and click the search button that pops up, you will get a new screen showing you the search results. The very last search result (not always on the first page if books have indexed) will say something like "Items Not Yet Archived (27)," where the number is the number of books that have not been indexed yet. If you do the reset, put your books on and then do the search every once in a while, you'll be able to see if they are archiving.

N3Wb, you've got it.

I didn't even need to copy the books back from the PC. I simply rebooted the Kindle. After only a couple of minutes, it showed that all the books had be indexed, except one, and that's one that I haven't opened yet.

By the way, the thing about rebooting is that you have to hold the slider for at least 20 seconds in order to switch the device off. I discovered that it's not enough just to hold it until the screen goes blank. Doing that seems to put it into normal sleep mode but without the "screen saver" image. If you hold it for 20 seconds, it goes through the full reboot cycle when you switch it on. I hadn't realised that at first.

One other small point: You said mentioned "Items Not Yet Archived (27)". I assume you meant: "Items Not Yet Indexed (27)".

So thanks for helping solve this irritating problem.

Great, glad it worked for you as well!

You're right, I just made a typo when I said archive, I meant index :)

I just hit this with my Kindle 2 as well. Books that had been indexed were being called "not indexed." Every book I had wasn't indexed. I tried deleting the indexes (under the hidden system folder) and that didn't work. I thought I had tried rebooting but didn't realize you have to hold the button down for 20 seconds. Once I did that, it appears to be indexing once again.

Still not sure what caused it to stop.