How to save highlighted portions in books not bought from Kobo store?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by tshering

Paola,
yes, this is what Davidfor is saying, cf. also post 3.If you would like to have the annotations and highlighted passages in a seperate file you can also try the tool referred to at this post. It is for Windows.

Originally Posted by paola

many thanks tshering, from Lynx-lynx message I had understood that highlights would be copied, not moved, to Calibre. Now I get it, thank you all!

NO, the annotations are only copied to the calibre library. The annotations on the device are not affected at all. If someone finds they are, please report it as it is a bug.

The problem that I was referring to is that there is no way to copy the annotations back to the device from calibre. The annotations are added to the text in the comments of the metadata. There isn't enough information to recreate the appropriate records on the device.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by melabonbon

When I copied them over, I got an "error" message for each one telling me there was already a file on the device with that name. In each case I told it to replace the newer file on the device with the older file that had been save to my computer before the device was reformatted. Was that right?

That should have worked. The message tells me that the annotations file was already there and you replaced it. But, that doesn't make sense. If you did a factory reset, visible partition on the device is formatted. After a factory reset, the annotations files only get created when you open an epub or PDF.

I would suggest going through the saved files and finding one that definitely has annotations in it. It is a text file containing XML. You can open them in a text editor. The first few lines show the book it is for, then there will be a"<annotation>" tag for each annotation. Once you find one, make sure it has been copied to the correct place on the device. Then, disconnect the device and test the book. If the annotations aren't there, add one, close and reopen the book to check that it is saved. Then connect the device and check the annotation file to see if the new annotation is there. And it is the name expected.

tshering's idea of checking the saved database would help check what books had annotations before the reset. Putting it back on the device might work, but it is likely to put you back to the same point you were before the reset. You could extract the annotations from the database and insert them into the current database. But, I have tried this in the past and it didn't. My tests show that, the annotations file takes precedence. Whatever is in that file will be read when opening the book.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by davidfor

You could extract the annotations from the database and insert them into the current database. But, I have tried this in the past and it didn't. My tests show that, the annotations file takes precedence. Whatever is in that file will be read when opening the book.

Melabonbon, I still think there is some hope. Maybe that the annotations file takes precedence over the database entries as said by Davidfor, I did not make any test in this respect. Anyway, I would suggest that if the annotation files do not bring the annotations back, then delete those annotation files and the manifest files (not sure whether deleting the manifest files is necessary, but does not hurt), and copy the bookmarks of the epubs (but not of those of the kepubs bought from Kobo) from your old database to the new database. If there are is not an annotation and manifest file for an epub on the device they get reconstructed from the database entries. By the way, in the case of kepub.epubs (maybe you have some of those too) the database is the only place where annotations and highlights are saved.

[melabonbon]

Thanks guys, but I think I am out of luck. In the Annotations folder, there are folders for tons of books that I never read, and therefore would have no annotations, and yet one book that I know for a fact I highlighted passages in and dog-eared some pages in, does not show up. So I must've done something wrong when I copied the folder over to my computer before doing the factory reset.

[AlPe]

BTW, if you are interested in exporting the annotations and highlights from your KoboReader.sqlite to text/CSV (e.g., for importing them in a spreadsheet), see:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...87&postcount=4