A few questions about notes files on the Kindle Voyage

[sun surfer]

-Is "My Clippings" completely separate from the notes (note/highlight/bookmark) files associated with each book? I.e. can I edit the My Clippings file, or even completely remove notes from one book on the file, and the actual notes on the book will still be fine regardless?

-If I delete a (calibre AZW3 or MOBI, sometimes originally bought from Amazon and sometimes not) book from the Voyage, will the notes file still be there? I.e. if, later on, I add the book back to the Voyage, will the notes show then?

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

-Is "My Clippings" completely separate from the notes (note/highlight/bookmark) files associated with each book? I.e. can I edit the My Clippings file, or even completely remove notes from one book on the file, and the actual notes on the book will still be fine regardless?

-If I delete a (calibre AZW3 or MOBI, sometimes originally bought from Amazon and sometimes not) book from the Voyage, will the notes file still be there? I.e. if, later on, I add the book back to the Voyage, will the notes show then?

Yes. My Clippings is basically a log file of the annotations you make on the device. It grows and grows and grows as you annotate. You can edit it, or even delete it, but it has no effect on the individual book annotations, which are independent. If you side load books, and annotate them, My Clippings is the ONLY place to find your annotations later if you delete the book, since these do not sync to the cloud. If you make a lot of annotations, it's a good idea to delete My Clippings once in awhile to recover storage and performance (back it up first if you care about what is in there). The larger it gets, the more it can affect performance, as it is re-indexed every time you add a new annotation. It at least used to be the case that adding annotations would get slower and slower as the file grew.

Personally I'd rather see an 'export annotations' feature similar to what Google Play Books does. My Clippings is a hack, but one which people have come to expect and rely on. For Amazon content, you can use a service like clippings.io to get more convenient access to your annotations.

[sun surfer]

Thanks tomsem! That's answers the questions about My Clippings completely.

As for the other questions, it seems like you're saying that if a sideloaded book is deleted and then added back to the Voyage the notes would be gone?

[HarryT]

Notes added to the book will be gone. Those in "My Clippings" will still be there.

[sun surfer]

I had played around with this and when added back quickly after deletion, the book retained its notes. Before I trusted it for longer times I wanted to verify what would happen and I'm glad I did; thanks for the clarification!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I had played around with this and when added back quickly after deletion, the book retained its notes. Before I trusted it for longer times I wanted to verify what would happen and I'm glad I did; thanks for the clarification!

How did you delete the book?

If you just deleted the book file, but left the auxiliary file in which the notes are stored (which has a ".mbp" extension), the notes would reappear when you reloaded the book. If you add and remove books using Calibre (as I do), Calibre deletes both the book and all its auxiliary files, so notes would disappear.

[sun surfer]

I deleted it through Calibre! It was only once and I wasn't expecting it to, so I was surprised. The deletion and re-download were all within a few minutes though so maybe that had something to do with it?

You are giving me hope though that there is a way to later add back books with notes, by manually saving the notes files onto my computer. However, I can't find the .mbp files on the Voyage - where are they exactly?

The only thing close to .mbp files that I see are MyClippings .mbp1 and .mbs files in the documents folder, and in the hidden .Trashes folder there are similar .mbp1 and .mbs files for one book. The one book was, I think, the only book with notes when I updated the Voyage.

In the documents folder, the .sdr folders have .azw3f, .azw3r, .apnx and sometimes .asc files.

In the hidden system folder I see an userannotlogsDir folder but it's empty.

[HarryT]

Ah, perhaps their names are different for AZW3 files. I may have given you incorrect information there. Perhaps someone else knows where notes are stored for AZW3 files?

[sun surfer]

No problem, Harry. I should have mentioned that all my books are currently AZW3. I originally asked about MOBI as well because I might use that format at some point. The book .mpb1 file in the .Trashes may be from me trying that book out on .mobi before I deleted that version.

It seems .asc is for x-ray and the end of the book while .apnx is for page numbers, but I couldn't find any online info as to what exactly .azw3r or .azw3f are for.

After some experimenting I've found that .azw3r is the notes file. If I add it back to a reloaded book then the notes appear again, whereas that doesn't happen for .azw3f. Adding both files or all the .sdr files back in works too.

[susan_cassidy]

Be careful when editing My Clippings in place. Once, I edited mine, and the Kindle became very confused. I could no longer read the file from the home menu. Of course, this was on a K1, but I doubt they've tweaked the code having to do with that file very much.

[sun surfer]

I'll keep that in mind, susan.

[eschwartz]

Yup -- azw3(r|f) are the AZW3 equivalent of the old mbp1/mbs files.

One handles annotations, the other has bookmarks, current location, etc. IIRC -- but I can never stir myself to remember which is which.


I know you add the ASIN to all your books -- this should mean your annotations are synced through Amazon (maybe depending on whether you have that ASIN in your purchases) which means after syncing your annotations should be restored.



The Kindle does delete annotations from purchased books when you "Remove From Device", since they are synced anyway -- only sideloaded books leave their notes behind, in order that you can re-add the book and pick up from where you left off.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I know you add the ASIN to all your books -- this should mean your annotations are synced through Amazon (maybe depending on whether you have that ASIN in your purchases) which means after syncing your annotations should be restored.

Thanks for the help again! Yes, I've found it does depend on whether the ASIN is in purchases. If it's bought through Amazon this works, otherwise no.

The Kindle does delete annotations from purchased books when you "Remove From Device", since they are synced anyway -- only sideloaded books leave their notes behind, in order that you can re-add the book and pick up from where you left off.

If I remove a book through Calibre, it seems like you're saying the Voyage will keep the notes for later. That would be great if it did. I wanted to test this out before I replied but I haven't had a chance yet.

[eschwartz]

Ah, no as HarryT pointed out in post #6, calibre will actually try to be helpful and "clean up" for you.
It's part of the Kindle device driver.

But if the notes are synced, then the Kindle will restore them from Amazon's servers.


Keep is not strictly the same as restore, and I like to separate the two ideas.

[sun surfer]

No problem! My plan now is to manually save all the files on my computer before deleting a book from the Voyage.

I've already found though that it has to be the *exact* same copy of the book or the notes might not load back properly. I edited the tiniest thing in one book - deleting the single unnecessary space from one word in the table of contents - and the notes loaded back two lines off.

It'd be great if I could keep files of every book on Kindle for Mac with notes but that appears to be impossible (without manually adding each note one by one) if it's not mobi or purchased through Amazon.