PRS-950 Help With Reader Library and Reader for Mac

[sun surfer]

So, until now I've only had Reader Library. It pretty much sucks, mainly because it is so slow. When I'm on a list of books and try to scroll it LAGS so bad, and I'm on a good new mac where all other kinds of various programs work great.

So I just found out about Reader for Mac and thought it sounded interested, so I downloaded it, and when it asked I said yes it could sync with Reader Library so it'd have my library. One thing I love about Reader for Mac is that it doesn't lag which automatically makes it better almost no matter what else.

But two things I don't like about it. First, when it opens it takes up the space of my screen from top to bottom, and I have my dock on the bottom, so the bottom of the window (mainly the part with controls) goes behind the dock. And it will not go any smaller! It will go wider or narrower, but it will not move up or down, stuck filling the screen from top to bottom.

So, I had to turn my dock on hiding when I was using Reader for Mac so that I could see the entire window, and even then, I still thought, well, at least it doesn't lag and is fast.

Second, it constantly shows this "cannot find reader" box when I open the software up. Like, uh, the reader's not plugged in yet, hold your horses. But I'll say OK then it just pops up again. And I think it's never going to stop when it finally stops like after five times of popping up.

So then I plugged in my reader to sync a new book and....nothing. I tried to search the internet and probably it's right in front of me but I'm not tech savvy enough and I'm not understanding. Is Reader for Mac not for my actual Sony Reader? Is it just for using on computers and phones? If so, why would it import my library and change my Reader Library options to not opening when my reader is connected and also having an option for itself to open when my reader is connected?

Because the reader didn't connect with the Reader for Mac, it just started charging when I plugged it in, and I also noticed that I can't figure out how to choose what I want to be synced with my reader on the new software, as if there's nowhere to choose that option.

So confusing! But that's not all! And that's not even really my main problem.

So, with all this, I just decided to get rid of Sony for Mac and bite the bullet and continue using the slow as molasses Reader Library. So I opened it up. It just happened to be in a book at the moment and...the book wasn't there! It said the book had moved or something.

So I went to the main list and all the books are still there in title, but none of them work! They all say the book has moved if I try to open them! But I have no idea where to.

So now I'm thinking instead of "syncing", the Reader for Mac actual TOOK the books from the Reader Library and left it empty.

So I'm trying to find the location of my books on my mac. I searched "reader" and found folders for both "Reader" (which I'm assuming is Reader for Mac wince there's no "Reader for Mac" folder) and "Reader Library"....and both are empty!

Then I even searched for particular books and they're not showing up in my computer! This may be obvious to someone else but I'm lost. I thought the files were always somewhere on the computer. Now it seems as if Reader for Mac somehow gobbled them up into itself and there are no individual files left.

Don't get me wrong, on Reader for Mac, the books are all still there and I can open them and read them on that program but that's it. It doesn't recognise my reader and I can't get the books moved back to Reader Library.

So this is a vent thread but also a plea for help! If someone can help it'd be much appreciated, especially if you can explain to may all this stuff I'm not understanding in simple terms. Am I missing something and this all should make sense, or is there something wrong?

And oh, btw, when I get a new reader it won't be Sony and I will be done with them. I loved my 950 at first and love the quality and some of the features, but the slow Reader Library software, and some problems with the 950 itself (mainly slowing to a snail's pace when I take too many notes), and now this, it's just too much trouble.

[chrisridd]

I haven't tried migrating like that, but there is a foolproof way to find where Reader is opening its books from.

Open the Reader app. Open a book.

Open the Activity Monitor app. Find "Reader for Mac" in the list, select it and click the "i" icon in the toolbar for Info.

Switch to the "Open Files and Ports" tab in Activity Monitor.

One of those lines will be your open book! It'll probably be near the bottom of the list.

Hope that helps :-)

[sun surfer]

Thanks so much for the help chrisridd. It's nice to know someone took time to read my long post and try to help!


Update to first post:

It's been days since this first happened, and with so many things I didn't understand it's taken me hours and days to even halfway figure it out.

First, I now know that Reader for Mac does indeed take the place of Reader Library and that you can use a Sony reader with it, not just computers and phones.

Second, I finally got my reader to show up in it, and when it does show up, I can sync or not sync as I choose. I don't know why my reader wouldn't show up at first, I think there is something kooky about the Reader for Mac program. Maybe it's just on my computer, maybe it's on all of them, I don't know, but it's kooky.

Third, I took chrisridd's great advice and found the location of my books. Or rather, some of my books. They were in the main library under "preferences" of all places, and then under "Sony Corp". I don't know why my search feature wouldn't show them.

However, finding them and searching into it more, I've discovered that the Reader software syncing has somehow erased most of my books! When I first posted, it had just happened that after syncing, all the books I tried to open on Reader Library were erased ones, while all the books I tried to open on Reader for Mac happened to be ones that weren't erased (remember, all my titles still show up on both programs as if all my books are still there). That's what led to my confusion while posting in that regard.

I have looked all over my computer and can't find the deleted books anywhere. I've used the search function, the spotlight function and manually searched about everything. I even searched the trash and though apparently deleted, they didn't go there.

I have no idea the rhyme or reason for which books it kept and which it deleted. The ones kept are not all Sony store purchases, and there were some Sony store purchases that were deleted. It included random books in alphabetical order, random books in size order; it just seemed to do it at random. I calculated it and it deleted 49.2% of my books. I wonder if there's something in it deleting very close to half of my library, but I still have no idea how it decided which books to delete.

The problem is not so much that they are deleted. I think I can get most of them, if not all, back, either from the store of purchase if I log in and re-download it (I think) or free downloads such as from the mobileread library.

The problem is that I'm a voracious note-taker and it seems to have also deleted all my notes for those books. Of course I don't take so many on every book, but unfortunately it decided to keep books such as "Breaking Dawn" and "The Princess Bride" where I didn't take many notes and deleted books such as "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "A Room with a View" where I took quite a few. But there is no pattern. It did delete some books that I didn't take any notes in and kept some that I took many notes in. Anyway, having many notes deleted by the software is a big blow and very, very annoying and saddening.

If any of you are going to offer me advice on how to save notes separately, uh, too late! I've already now learned that it's possible and not even that hard from my days of research these last few days. But unfortunately I never knew about it before or thought vaguely of it being something very hard and complicated, so no notes were saved in separate files before through my own doing. The saddest part is that I was literally very close to start figuring out how to save them separately anyway. That's sort of how I found the Reader for Mac program in the first place, as I was starting to look around and try to figure out some more stuff about my reader (saving and safe-guarding my notes separately being at near the top of the list). Then I pretty much immediately found Reader for Mac and downloaded it and the rest is history. How ironic that so many notes taken over a few years get deleted at the very moment I'm trying to figure out how to save and safeguard them. I think I'll go listen to Alanis Morissette's Ironic for awhile.



What I would still love help with (and for the TLDR crowd, the main points of this post):


-Now that I have a choice, I'm inclined to use the Reader for Mac software instead of Reader Library, for one huge reason - Reader Library is extremely slow and laggy for me and Reader for Mac isn't. Does anyone have any tips on making Reader Library not slow or laggy? If that could be fixed I'd just use it.


-But unless that's fixed, I'm using Reader for Mac and I am still having many problems with it. First and most importantly - whenever I open it a box pops up within minute that says

Unable to synchronize the device. Please take a note of the error and contact Sony customer support.

Error: Maximum number of creates at any one time exceeded - error code: -40338 (400).

This doesn't happen when the reader is plugged in; it's when the reader is NOT plugged in or connected at all. I press "OK", it comes back within a minute or so, I press the little red X and it comes back within a minute or so, although after a few times it usually stops, but it's very annoying and makes me worried the software is corrupt or something. And it does it every single time I open the program. Does anyone have any idea what's going on or how to fix this?


-The Reader for Mac window takes up space from the top of my screen to the very bottom and it won't resize any smaller height-wise. It will let me change its width but not its height. It's annoying because I keep a dock at the bottom of the screen and the dock covers the bottom Reader for Mac controls, so every time I open it I must hide my dock to use Reader for Mac. Does anyone know how to fix this?


-Does anyone understand or have any idea why syncing Reader Library with Reader for Mac deleted half my books and notes?


-This is a last-ditch effort but does anyone have any suggestions or ideas about how to possibly recover or find the lost/deleted books and notes that the program deleted? I'm guessing they're probably gone for good, but if I can somehow find them or recover them, that'd be incredible.



so much for any help!

[david_e]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

-This is a last-ditch effort but does anyone have any suggestions or ideas about how to possibly recover or find the lost/deleted books and notes that the program deleted? I'm guessing they're probably gone for good, but if I can somehow find them or recover them, that'd be incredible.

so much for any help!

Easy-peasy

Open Time Machine and use the latest backup that occurred before all of this happened.

[sun surfer]

Thanks for the help, david_e!

I got so excited for a second, especially when I looked in Applications and saw I had Time Machine, so I opened it up, and it just said to set it up and had a little slide button showing it's turned off.

I know I mentioned way above but I'm not tech savvy at all. It's one reason I love Macs - on the whole so much easier, more non-techy-user-friendly and more intuitive to deal with. I'd heard the words Time Machine before but wasn't really sure what it was - honestly I thought it was some separate device to buy - so I didn't know there was any way to set that up on my computer.

Now that I know I can and could've, on top of the irony of the timing of these being deleted right before I figured out how to save note files separately and also apparently just before the introduction of this new Evernote thing or whatever that saves notes outside of the Reader software, I feel like I'll need to devote at least a good week or two to moping around about all this!

[david_e]

Let's see if I can really help... I loaded the app onto my MacBook to see what has changed since I used to have a Sony.

First, the view. When the app opens / starts it is in a smaller window that does go behind the dock. If you click on the green button in the upper left hand corner (red to close, yellow to minimize, green shrinks / expands) it should expand into a not quite full screen mode that keeps the bottom of the Sony screen just above the top of the dock. Turn the hiding off before you open the app to test this and see if it works for you the same as it did for me.

To find your missing books… First question, are all of your books epub? If yes, go into the finder and type .epub into the search field and make sure you have THIS MAC selected as the place to search. If they weren't all epub, look by the file type .pdf. I'm unaware of any other file type you could read on a Sony reader, but if they were something different, just look for the file type.

[sun surfer]

The green button works as you say! Thanks. It's strange though, because before I press it, I can double-click the bottom right corner to drag and change the width of the window, but not the height, but after I press the green button and the window becomes slightly less high to above the dock, the window also becomes the entire width of the screen, and if I try to double-click the bottom right corner to drag the window to be less wide, it automatically makes the height full-screen below my dock again!?! What the heck. But still, I'll take a full-width window above the dock than a full-heighth window below the dock that change change widths, so it's an improvement!

Yes, all of my books are epubs. I searched as you specified and only the non-deleted books show up. I'm really thinking the other titles are gone for good. I just think it's so strange how when it synced and deleted the books, Reader for Mac still took over the titles of the deleted books, and left the titles of the deleted books on Reader Library as well, but somehow deleted all the contents and the files. I don't even see how this is possible since I thought all deleted files should go in trash, which I checked and they're not, but somehow the software did delete them. And when I finally found where the books I still have are located in the Reader software in the Finder on my Mac, only the non-deleted books show. So it just makes me wonder - where are the titles that still show up coming from?!? I'm glad they're there so I can at least take proper inventory of what's been deleted, but they're just phantom titles on the software with no associated files apparently.

[EldRick]

There's a better way. Toss the reader applications and use calibre- it's far more functional and works very well on a Mac.

[sun surfer]

I have calibre that I've used rarely for problems (long story but I got help here on fixing some ebook problems) and maybe that's the way I should go.

I don't know though if you can set it up to automatically work when the reader is plugged in, or is it more a manual thing?

Either way, calibre is kind of confusing. It seems very functional but harder to figure out what's going on with it. But if I can, and can get over it looking so much less good-looking, it might be a better way for sure than these awful Sony softwares.

~

And the saga continues...

(and a new important question coming up)


So, it's taken me, what, a week now, but I finally have a bit of good news (although, of course, there's a problem with the good news...).


First, before that, let me say I did contact Sony support by chat. Much better than by phone and the person seemed pretty helpful, at first anyway.

He wanted to direct connect to look at the problems, so I let him even though it felt dangerous and invasive to let him have all that access to my computer, but oh well.

So let's review what I got out of the THREE+ HOUR help session:

I told him I had four problems, and we went one by one.


Problem 1 as told by me - Syncing Reader for Mac with Reader Library deleted half my library and the accompanying notes. I know I can re-download the books from the store or internet, but all my notes are gone. Can you help recover them?

Resolution from him - *after an hour and a half of him snooping around and trying things on my computer* There is no way for the software to delete your files. Your solution will be to re-download the books.


Problem 2 as told by me - While you were looking you already noticed the non-stop pop-up about a "syncing error". Can you stop that?

Resolution from him - *after awhile and after eventually trying to start deleting things on my library at which point I had to fight for control of the mouse to stop him* Your solution will be to delete everything off your library, delete the program and then re-install and re-download all the books.


Problem 3 as told by me - The Reader for Mac window cannot change height and width together. I can press the green button and the height decreases a little but that's it. Can you help?

Resolution from him - *after ten or twenty minutes of trying to change it himself* The software is not designed to do that.


Problem 4 as told by me - The Reader Library is extremely laggy for me. Can you help?

Resolution from him - *he opens it back up and somehow, when I didn't realise, he had deleted everything off my Reader Library (it was still all on Reader for Mac although I caught him about to delete all that earlier too), so there are no list of books to scroll through and lag with* It appears to me your Reader Library is working very fast.


So yes, basically three hours and not one of my problems were fixed.

The second help, to delete everything and start over, I'm in the process of listing everything and saving all my notes first so I can't do it yet, but I will. Though I'd already thought of doing that myself anyway after safeguarding everything. The other three helps were complete busts.

I was especially annoyed that he deleted everything from reader library (I think when he was doing some jiggying around in the Finder files area so I didn't realise he was deleting Reader Library) and that he was about to start deleting everything off my Reader for Mac! Anyway...


Time for a little good news -


Today I've been trying to list everything separately and save all my notes and such and was almost finished when an idea hit me -

My 950 has an SD card. I got help here at mobileread awhile ago about speed issues on my 950 and part of the help was to get an SD card and store everything on there instead of the 950 hardware.

When this current problem happened, things were still on the SD card. I described my problems even getting the Reader for Mac to recognise the 950 at all, and when it did, it apparently erased all the books that were also erased on the Reader for Mac.

Oddly though, Reader for Mac doesn't open up a separate little panel, as far as I can tell, for the SD card like it does for the 950 when I plug the 950 in, unlike Reader Library which would open up tabs for both the 950 and the SD card.

So I noticed that today, that there was no SD card panel showing up and it made me wonder why not. I still haven't figured that out, but I took the SD card out of the reader and put it in my computer to see directly what might be on it and not showing up.

JACKPOT! Kind of. Apparently, Reader for Mac did erase all the BOOKS off the SD card, but not the annotation files! They're all still there! And that includes every important book with notes that I had except for only two. It's still sad to lose all my notes for two important books, but that's way better than losing notes for like 20 or 30.

BUT there's a problem. Of course, heh. Nothing can be so easy. I can't make any use of the files.

I tried clicking to open them and they open in text edit, but not in any useful way. They are loaded with so much crazy code it's basically unintelligible.

Here's an example:

Spoiler:

</content>
<sony:data xmlns:sony="http://www.sony.com/xmlns/product/prs/adeannotations">
<sony:item name="identifier" value="prsID.2.highlight:60-0-0-dGV4dC9wYXJ0MTgueGh0bWwjcG9pbnQoLzEvNC8yLzIwLzE6NT IwKQA=-dGV4dC9wYXJ0MTgueGh0bWwjcG9pbnQoLzEvNC8yLzIwLzE6NT I3KQA=" />
<sony:identifier>PLEASE IGNORE</sony:identifier>
<sony:item name="duplicate" value="false" />
</sony:data>
</annotation>
<annotation>
<dc:identifier>urn:uuid00005FABA9E-14FA-9632-7E3E643B081D</dc:identifier>
<dc:date>2012-04-28T18:01:42Z</dc:date>
<target>
<fragment start="text/part18.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/152/1:3)" end="text/part18.xhtml#point(/1/4/2/152/1:240)"/>
</target>

The text of my notes are mixed in there here and there but it's extremely hard to find them. And then, the actual highlights aren't there, just my notes on the highlights (although plenty of highlights didn't have notes).

But, I've surmised that all that gobbledygook must be some kind of code for where the highlights are in the book so I think I have the codes to all my highlights and notes, I just need to be able to use them!

So I thought of re-downloading a book and adding the appropriate file to the book. I picked one and did it. I re-downloaded it, added it back to Reader for Mac then added the annotation file (and the Reader for Mac let me add the annotation file) but when I opened the book, no luck. There are no notes or highlights for it. And it was the exact same book as far as I can tell.

Soooo....

Major question -

Can anyone help me figure out how to make these annotation files useful? Any way to get them to work right?

And again, thanks so much for any help with my saga!

[EldRick]

"I don't know though if you can set it up to automatically work when the reader is plugged in..."

Not clear what you mean by "work". calibre manages your library. It can, for example, automatically copy any books in your Kindle directory into calibre, and convert them to other formats - for example, epub for a Sony.

When you plug in an e-reader, calibre will notice, and will show which books are loaded in the reader. If you have new books, you select them and tell calibre to load them into the reader.

"They say it's automatic, but really, you have to push this button..."

[sun surfer]

Thanks Eldrick. What I meant was that I didn't know if calibre will notice the e-reader plugged in and show it in the software where I can manage the reader from the software, like I can with the Sony software. Because I have calibre and it's never noticed the reader before.

You've answered that though saying it will notice it, so I might just need to brace myself to learn the basics of calibre so I can really get going with it.


Another Update:

Holy cow! Jackpot again!

So I've been trying for a few days now to figure out how to get these .annot files to work. Still no luck, but I've been trying a lot.

Anyway, I finally decided to try to, instead of using the software, manually load a deleted e-book and its .annot file onto the reader and then hope that the reader itself might make the file work with the ebook.

It didn't. Wah wah waaah. BUT, what did I find when I looked at my e-reader manually? (which I've never done before)

First, it has all kinds of files and weird things I don't understand inside it. But it also has EVERY SINGLE .annot file I've ever made! I don't know how or why but it does! So now I have ALL of my annotation files, though I still have the precipitous task of figuring out how to use them.

I've tried recovery programs to try and maybe get the old reader library with all the books still there back, but I've gotten so confused. The first one, Disk Drill, let me look, and then when I tried to recover wanted 89 dollars. Yeah, not happening when I'm still not sure if what I recover will be what I was wanting.

Second I tried Stellar Phoenix and it took a lot longer and made my Mac's fan turn really loudly (which my fan rarely turns on) and then when the results came up I tried to press something and the program froze up, so I closed it, and the rest of the computer wouldn't work well until like five minutes later either, and haven't tried it again yet.

I'd been googling .annot since I first found those files and nothing, but then I thought of searching .annot here and found a helpful thread.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ghlight=.annot

It talks about the exact same look in text edit of the .annot that I have and besides that I'm not really sure what the heck it says, heh. But I'm confident there's a solution in there somewhere if I can just decipher it! It's like trying to read Vulcan with no translation help!

I think I've gotten that I need to either replace or erase sony:data stuff in the text edit with something, then save it newly like that, then maybe do what I already did and put it on my reader with with the ebook, and then maybe I also have to restart the e-reader before the annotations will work again?

I don't know, all I know is I've already fooled around with it a few hours (yes, it really takes me that long to even start to begin to get things!) and no luck yet. I think I've done it right according to the directions in the other thread but maybe not, so I'm determined to work with it some more and hopefully get it! If I can crack it, it would solve all my current problems! Well, most anyway!

[sun surfer]

Full and complete success!

It's taken another few days but I got it. I'm slow as molasses and get perplexed easily at this kind of stuff, but I'm persistent and I did it! I got an .annot file to re-install into a formerly deleted book and all my highlight and notes to show back up again! I feel like a tech genius now.

It's going to be slow and steady work getting all my books and notes back, but it's worth it and now I can, and from what I thought at the beginning, I'm amazed that I've found ALL of my notes and when I'm done it will be as though nothing had happened!

Thanks for everyone who took the time to read my long posts and try to help me in this thread! And another big thanks to elminster who gave me the answer to recovering all the .annot files in the thread I linked in my last post. It was complicated and garbled looking to my eyes and the first many tries I kept getting something wrong or not understanding it right and it wouldn't work, but finally with patience I got it right.