Troubleshooting I messed up my Kindle - the word search function is dead

[Maltinette]

Hello Kindle owners

- Sorry in advance for my mistakes, I don't speak English very well -
I'm a researcher and I use my Kindle PW 10 daily and since yesterday, I'm devastated...The reason is that I store a huge library on it - about 1700 books - and I spend my time using the word search function among all these books, which is essential for my work

Anyway, everything was working fine, everything was smooth (especially since I still have more than 20 GB available in the device) until I made a bad manipulation yesterday by unplugging my Kindle without having first ejected it from Calibre, which I use to store my books. A message on the Kindle told me that I had unplugged it incorrectly and from then on, it became impossible for me to use my precious research tool.

So I ended up installing (by downloading it from Amazon's website, otherwise it was not possible from my device) the latest update, as it was advised in case of a bug. It installed well but it didn't help. I also restarted the device several times, without success.

I suspect that the indexing time must be immense when you have so many books and that it is perhaps normal to wait several days before really worrying. But when I start a search for a word in a single book, I am immediately told "no results", rather than that there are still a lot of books not yet indexed.

On the other hand, when I search for a completely fancy word (hegjzehgzyg23323...) or for a word that I know exists among all the books, I don't get the "unindexed books" mention as it should be, but just a little wheel that spins indefinitely next to "text in books".

I had obviously created a whole bunch of collections but didn't sync anything to Amazon because I use my Kindle offline all the time.
Before I decide to have to reset it and spend an eternity putting everything back together, I'm coming to you for advice...
In your opinion, should I wait several days before leaving the Kindle plugged into an electrical outlet? The problem is that I have no way of knowing if the indexing is in progress or if it is blocked .

However, I need to be able to get the word search option back as soon as possible, otherwise I'm stuck searching myself...Ouch, what a pain!

Thank you in advance for your advice
Maltia

[tomsem]

It sounds like the index file (at least) is corrupt, and as you are not getting unindexed books message, it seems Kindle thinks there is nothing to index.

Off hand, I don't remember if the index file is something you can delete so that Kindle will re-create it (short of jail break). And even if you could do it, it might not be for the best, as the issue may involve corrupt ebook files that cause indexing to fail to complete (this condition is unfortunately 'silent', one would really prefer an error message, Amazon, after all these years!). Reset might be the surest recovery.

What happens with newly downloaded or side-loaded books? do they become searchable?

If you reset, you might make a copy of /documents folder to make it a little more convenient to restore the content. And with 1700 books it could take awhile to re-index. I've never faced this situation myself, but others recommend loading smaller batches (less than 100?), waiting for indexing to finish, then doing another batch, etc. I'm not sure if it saves time overall, but at least you can more easily isolate issues with corrupt ebook files.

You can check progress by searching for '.' (period) or some other punctuation character.

The PW (11th gen) is significantly faster than the previous one, USB-C transfer is faster, 5GHz WiFi download is faster, so you might well use this crisis as justification for getting one. The display is much better too.

[hleo12]

Yes. I agree with tomsem. Load ebooks at a smaller batch. I once loaded 400+ books after a reset and it took my Kindle until the next day to finish indexing.

[haertig]

The suggestions above are good.

I might add that if your Kindle is essential for your work, you buy a second Kindle as a spare. Load this backup Kindle with the same books as your primary Kindle. A basic Kindle does not cost much, and will probably be on sale in a few weeks during the "Black Friday" sales in the USA. You didn't say what country you are from, so I don't know if you have access to these sales or not. If your Kindle is very important for your work, it might not be a bad idea to buy a new one every three or so years, and then cycle the previous one to the backup role.

The above suggestion does not help you with your current problem, but it may help prevent future problems.

[Elaine T]

[QUOTE=tomsem;4266583]It sounds like the index file (at least) is corrupt, and as you are not getting unindexed books message, it seems Kindle thinks there is nothing to index.

Off hand, I don't remember if the index file is something you can delete so that Kindle will re-create it (short of jail break). And even if you could do it, it might not be for the best, as the issue may involve corrupt ebook files that cause indexing to fail to complete (this condition is unfortunately 'silent', one would really prefer an error message, Amazon, after all these years!). Reset might be the surest recovery.



You can delete the index file. Just do it before you go away for several hours/go to bed, or something, and leave your device plugged in. I've done this several times as I have a similar issue with my device. I plug in my device to my laptop (windows, if it matters), find the "system" directory, and within that, the Search indexes folder. For a first try, just delete the index.db file in it. If that doesn't fix the problem, delete everything in the Search Indexes folder. That hard resets the Search database.

Rebuilding the indexes takes time and battery power, so I try to do it at night.