Firmware Update Kindle Collection Manager for Windows

[megachirops]

jangell2: To display only collections you need to change it to sort "By Collections" and not By Title, Author or Most Recent. Once you do this you will only see your collections (plus any books that are not in *any* collection).

Unolord: Are you sure you reset the kindle as the instructions say? You can't just turn it off and on, you have to do a real reset (either holding the switch in the on/off position for X number of seconds (forget the exact number) or going to the settings page, hitting menu and choosing Restart). Either way you should see it take a minute or two to boot up and after that you should see the collections that you created in the app.

[Unolord]

Originally Posted by megachirops

jangell2: To display only collections you need to change it to sort "By Collections" and not By Title, Author or Most Recent. Once you do this you will only see your collections (plus any books that are not in *any* collection).

Unolord: Are you sure you reset the kindle as the instructions say? You can't just turn it off and on, you have to do a real reset (either holding the switch in the on/off position for X number of seconds (forget the exact number) or going to the settings page, hitting menu and choosing Restart). Either way you should see it take a minute or two to boot up and after that you should see the collections that you created in the app.

I guess I wasn't holding the switch long enough.... D'oh! https://www2.mobileread.com/i/smiliesadd1/smack.gif

I selected reset from the menu and it worked. Thanks.

[ElizabethN]

I discovered at least one problem that caused KCM to quit working on a device that was previously fine.

KCM apparently doesn't like what appears to be duplicate files. I will have to verify this with some other files tomorrow as I am out of time tonight.

I had problems with 2 ebooks I updated tonight. Both were purchased from Amazon and downloaded via whispernet. Both were then cleaned up (metadata etc) and sideloaded onto the kindle using calibre. If the downloaded file and the sideloaded file were both present on the kindle, KCM wouldn't open. I deleted both files of each book, KCM worked. I then re-loaded only the revised metadata AZW file of each book & KCM still worked.

To my eyes these did not appear to be duplicate files as their basic file structure was different when viewed in folder mode: title-randomnumbers.azw (from amazon) vs author-title.azw (from calibre). But KCM apparently doesn't like something when they're both present. Maybe the way KCM "reads" the kindle files?

Sometime this week after work, I will try duplicating this with another ebook.

I don't know if this would also occur if you had downloaded a sample of a book then purchased the complete book and hadn't deleted the sample.

Unfortunately I have lots of "duplicate" files to clean off the K-DX before I can see if this is the primary reason why KCM won't play with my K-DX.

Hope this possibly helps someone else.

[anesthezea]

Elizabeth - I think you're onto something! :c)

The newest version of Calibre now tells you if there are duplicate files on your reader, so I was able to go through my Kindle folders and delete the duplicates. Once I did the same for my Samples folder, KCM opened again. Thank you for the heads up!

[ElizabethN]

Originally Posted by anesthezea

Elizabeth - I think you're onto something! :c)

The newest version of Calibre now tells you if there are duplicate files on your reader, so I was able to go through my Kindle folders and delete the duplicates. Once I did the same for my Samples folder, KCM opened again. Thank you for the heads up!

How do you get Calibre to tell you if there are duplicates? I have 0.7.18 but the only button I see is "remove matching books from device." I would like to see the matching files and potentially merge them, rather than deleting one or both files.

Will check Calibre forums for answer as well.

Thanks.

[acolegate]

Hi megachirops,

I'll check the tpz files you've mailed me and let you know how I get on.

;-)

Thanks

[acolegate]

Originally Posted by jangell2

I've noticed some oddities:
1) If I sort by Collections, I've got several books that show up on the Home screen even though they are in a collection.

2) I bought two free games, Shuffled Row & Every Word and they don't show up in the left pane of Collection Manger. Neither do the Oxford Dictionary of English or The New Oxford American dictionary. Which means I can't use Collection Manger to put them in a collection.

Hi,

Hmm, games you say? We don't get games in the UK yet, but I'd be really interested to see their file formats. Would you mind mailing them to me so I can see if KCM will handle them for you?

I'll also look into the dictionary files - I already have the American Dictionary which came with my Kindle.

[Lordblacknail]

I have used Kindle Collection Manager about six times, and it works flawlessly each time.

Lordblacknail

[acolegate]

Originally Posted by ElizabethN

I discovered at least one problem that caused KCM to quit working on a device that was previously fine.

KCM apparently doesn't like what appears to be duplicate files. I will have to verify this with some other files tomorrow as I am out of time tonight.

I had problems with 2 ebooks I updated tonight. Both were purchased from Amazon and downloaded via whispernet. Both were then cleaned up (metadata etc) and sideloaded onto the kindle using calibre. If the downloaded file and the sideloaded file were both present on the kindle, KCM wouldn't open. I deleted both files of each book, KCM worked. I then re-loaded only the revised metadata AZW file of each book & KCM still worked.

To my eyes these did not appear to be duplicate files as their basic file structure was different when viewed in folder mode: title-randomnumbers.azw (from amazon) vs author-title.azw (from calibre). But KCM apparently doesn't like something when they're both present. Maybe the way KCM "reads" the kindle files?

Sometime this week after work, I will try duplicating this with another ebook.

I don't know if this would also occur if you had downloaded a sample of a book then purchased the complete book and hadn't deleted the sample.

Unfortunately I have lots of "duplicate" files to clean off the K-DX before I can see if this is the primary reason why KCM won't play with my K-DX.

Hope this possibly helps someone else.

These are really interesting scenarios - thanks for bringing this up and for working hard trying to isolate the problem.

I think I might know what's going on.

KCM uses internal data storage structures that expect all entries to be unique. If you've got two books on a device with the same metadata, under certain circumstances, it could cause KCM to bomb-out as it's not expecting duplicates.

Can you mail me the two files that cause KCM to crash and I'll see if I can recreate and rectify the problem on my development machine.

Thanks

[bspline]

I have downloaded KCM and I have some points to make...

First, there are a lot of repeat entries, but I guess it's already been identified as an issue.

Second, most of my books are DRM-free, as in unDRMed. Living in Brazil means I can do that legally, without DMCA fears. As so happens, the icons still say they are DRM protected, though Calibre (and the fact that I removed the DRM) says otherwise.

Also, having downloaded the books through K4PC means the filenames are the Amazon Serial Numbers they assign to each book. Now, some of them appear on KCM with proper names, others only show the filename, and I have checked the option that shows filenames on options.

As an idea, I think the icons should show (colors or something else) which of the books are already in one (or more) collections, and the ones that are not. I have only 550 books in my kindle, but I guess there's people with more.

The option to save a "collection organization" file just in case you want to experiment, and things go awry.

Those are the things I remember, I'll post other stuff as I come across.

All in all, great job!

[Pushka]

Ok, I must be a tecchie luddite because I dont understand what I am seeing, yet I have mastered Calibre. On the right side widnow I have one book that is repeated 8 times, so I find that a little confusing. Some collections dont have the right number of books in them, and some collections show as not having any! Um, what am I supposed to do here....

[anesthezea]

Originally Posted by ElizabethN

How do you get Calibre to tell you if there are duplicates? I have 0.7.18 but the only button I see is "remove matching books from device." I would like to see the matching files and potentially merge them, rather than deleting one or both files.

Will check Calibre forums for answer as well.

Thanks.

It would say "Main (2 books)" in the "On Device" column when I plugged in my Kindle. The first time I had dupes on my K3, this worked in Calibre and I was easily able to find and delete the extras from the Kindle by opening it as a folder and searching for the book title. I was afraid to do anything directly through Calibre in case I accidentally deleted the book from my library.

The second time I had dupes and KCM wouldn't open, I couldn't find what I had duplicated at all. I ended up deleting the collection folders from my Kindle directly, one at a time, until KCM would open again. Then I just ended up deleting everything from the Kindle and am now in the process of sideloading everything from scratch.

I love my Kindle, but the way Amazon does collections/folders and such is just really clunky. I miss the way my old Sony used to sync my Calibre tags so easily.

[elmoglick]

Originally Posted by Pushka

Ok, I must be a tecchie luddite because I dont understand what I am seeing, yet I have mastered Calibre. On the right side widnow I have one book that is repeated 8 times, so I find that a little confusing. Some collections dont have the right number of books in them, and some collections show as not having any! Um, what am I supposed to do here....

Exactly the same problem I am having. I'm wary of making any changes using KCM until the display is correct. Perhaps 0.5 will have these problems resolved.

[Pushka]

Originally Posted by elmoglick

Exactly the same problem I am having. I'm wary of making any changes using KCM until the display is correct. Perhaps 0.5 will have these problems resolved.

Phew, it isnt just me then!

[anvarit]

Is there a way to create a sub collection? So a collection in a collection