What does "Repair your Kobo account" do?

[bgalbrecht]

A day ago I contacted Kobo customer support to see if I could get a refund for a book that I accidentally bought twice (it now has a new URL). The CSR somehow managed to mess up my library, so that almost all of my books were missing from my library, but he assured me that he could fix it. When I checked about 8 hours later, I was still missing about 25% of my books, so I contacted customer support again, and the second CSR said that I had a lot of deleted books, but I could restore them at the website under the Purchase History page. I probably could, if it didn't error out every time I bring up the Purchase History page. The second CSR offered to reset my books, and now I'm only missing about 50 books (no idea which ones, of course). I just checked a book out from Overdrive with my Clara HD, and now none of my ereaders will sync, they all fail. I don't know whether it's related to the damage the first CSR did to my library, but the timing makes me wonder.

I don't really want to do a factory reset of my readers, since it means that at least 50 ebooks will disappear from them and it will take a couple days to reload them. I was wondering what the other option in the Advanced section of Device Information does, "Repair your Kobo Account"? Will it delete any books from my reader when it "refreshes all of your books and collections"?

[davidfor]

Firstly, the CSR told you to go to the wrong place. It should have been the library - My Books and then Archive.

The "Repair your Kobo Account", removes all purchased books and triggers a download for them. This is probably the most complete sync you can do without losing the sideloaded books. It should fix the problems here. But, I would suggest looking at your library on-line and see what is where. If it isn't syncing, it might be that all the books are in the Archive. If so, you can restore them from there manually, but, I'd be pushing Kobo to fix it.

If this doesn't work, try signing out of the account. You will lose the reading status and annotations for sideloaded books, but, you won't have to sideload them again.

Also, do this on one device. Turn the WiFi on the others until you get one sorted out. Hopefully, the others will sort themselves out when they sync after one is fixed. But, the repair might be needed on them as well.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Firstly, the CSR told you to go to the wrong place. It should have been the library - My Books and then Archive.

The "Repair your Kobo Account", removes all purchased books and triggers a download for them. This is probably the most complete sync you can do without losing the sideloaded books. It should fix the problems here. But, I would suggest looking at your library on-line and see what is where. If it isn't syncing, it might be that all the books are in the Archive. If so, you can restore them from there manually, but, I'd be pushing Kobo to fix it.

If this doesn't work, try signing out of the account. You will lose the reading status and annotations for sideloaded books, but, you won't have to sideload them again.

Also, do this on one device. Turn the WiFi on the others until you get one sorted out. Hopefully, the others will sort themselves out when they sync after one is fixed. But, the repair might be needed on them as well.

You're wrong about the deleted books, because I had looked for them in the Archive page, and they are not there. Since I apparently have too many books for the Purchase History to be displayed, I'll have to rely on Kobo to fix what they broke.

The repair device caused my new library book to show up, but the sync still fails. I am signing out on one of my readers now, but it takes several days to reload all my books to the reader, assuming that my syncing problems are not all on the Kobo server side.

[Barbara1955]

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[davidfor]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

You're wrong about the deleted books, because I had looked for them in the Archive page, and they are not there. Since I apparently have too many books for the Purchase History to be displayed, I'll have to rely on Kobo to fix what they broke.

Well, I will disagree on being wrong. But, maybe I misinterpreted what the CSR was telling you to do.

The Purchase History has no information about the status of your books, beyond the fact that you purchased the book. The only thing that might be helpful is that it has a link to the book details page. Clicking that to see the book should show the status. Where the price and buying buttons would be, should have "You already have this title." and a "View in My Books" button if the book is in the library. If it is in the Archive, then it will have "You already have this item, but have removed it from your library" with an "Add to My Books" button. It does look like if you delete completely, Kobo still remembers this, but I haven't tested this with a book I paid money for. They have all been freebies. I can't see a book I paid to test with that I'm willing to risk.

That status might be what the CSR was talking about. But, it would mean visiting each book and seeing what the current status is, and hopefully being able to press an "Add to My Books" button to get it back.

The "My Books" section of the library shows what will be synced. The "Archive" section shows what you don't want on the device, but, haven't decided to get rid of completely.

The repair device caused my new library book to show up, but the sync still fails.

As the library book showed up, did the other books in your library show up? Does failed mean that the other books didn't download, or was there was an error message?

I am signing out on one of my readers now, but it takes several days to reload all my books to the reader, assuming that my syncing problems are not all on the Kobo server side.

If the books aren't in the "My Books" list, they won't sync. Based on what you are saying, most of them aren't. And that sounds like something Kobo has to fix. Especially as they are the ones that broke it.

And one more thought. If you still have a device that has all the books on it, take a copy of the database. There is enough information in there to find all the books. At the least, it has the titles and authors. But, there are also ids and links to the books in the store. It could also be used as proof of what you had purchased.

[bgalbrecht]

It looks like Kobo managed to restore all my books, since a couple of books that I had actually deleted got restored as well. You're probably right about what the CSR was suggesting, and it certainly would have difficult and time consuming to check all of my books from the purchase history, if that page ever actually worked for me.

Running Repair your Kobo account appears to have fixed 2 of my 3 Kobos, and the 3rd one I had to log out and log back in, so now it's reloading all my books purchased from Kobo. It's possible that the third one might have failed because I think it went to sleep before it finished, and I tried to wake it up and managed to get it to power off. Oops.

[davidfor]

That's good to hear. And I have had the sleep problem as well. If the download gets interrupted, you don't need to do a repair again. As long as it started to download the books, it will have fixed the database entries. You can download the rest from the book list. Either tap any with "Download" as the status (handy to get a book quickly) or tap the menu icon at the top-right of the list and use "Download all". You can watch them download as the status changes to "Pending" and then "Downloading" with a progress bar.

And for curiosity, how many books have you bought? You said it would take several days to reload the books. I'm at 564 purchased, and I think that took less than two hours to download the last time I tried. Sideloading is a lot faster recently. 1000 books definitely take less than an hour and might be under 30 minutes.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That's good to hear. And I have had the sleep problem as well. If the download gets interrupted, you don't need to do a repair again. As long as it started to download the books, it will have fixed the database entries. You can download the rest from the book list. Either tap any with "Download" as the status (handy to get a book quickly) or tap the menu icon at the top-right of the list and use "Download all". You can watch them download as the status changes to "Pending" and then "Downloading" with a progress bar.

And for curiosity, how many books have you bought? You said it would take several days to reload the books. I'm at 564 purchased, and I think that took less than two hours to download the last time I tried. Sideloading is a lot faster recently. 1000 books definitely take less than an hour and might be under 30 minutes.

Let's just say it's been downloading for at least 18 hours and it's about half done. I have a lot of cookbooks that range from 20MB to 200 MB that take a lot longer to download. I should have them all in Calibre, so I could sideload them, but then I'd have two copies of all the books purchased from Kobo showing up. Is it possible to download the entire library with the Kobo Desktop and then sideload them to the reader with only one entry as though they had been downloaded via wifi?

[mathil]

You can do that by connecting the device to Calibre, going to the Device tab, right clicking on the downloaded book and choosing 'Sync book to the library'. You'll then be prompted to choose the corresponding sideloaded book in the library. When you're done you'll need to update the metadata on the device.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by mathil

You can do that by connecting the device to Calibre, going to the Device tab, right clicking on the downloaded book and choosing 'Sync book to the library'. You'll then be prompted to choose the corresponding sideloaded book in the library. When you're done you'll need to update the metadata on the device.

The catch is that if I sideload everything from Calibre, which I used to do, I end up with two entries for each book I've purchased from Kobo, and if I'm opening a book through search instead of browsing, I can't tell which one is already on my reader. If the Kobo Desktop can download all my books, and then sideload them so that the reader treats it as though it had downloaded them via wifi so there's only one entry, I might do that the next time I have to restore a reader from scratch.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Let's just say it's been downloading for at least 18 hours and it's about half done. I have a lot of cookbooks that range from 20MB to 200 MB that take a lot longer to download.

That sounds like a lot of books and a lot on the large side.

And for the record, they have changed how the repair works. I was curious about how long it takes so I tried it on one of my devices. It finished in a few minutes. When I checked timestamps in the database and the files, it looks like they are no longer removing the files first. The database entries were rebuilt. But, I guess they checked the files matched and only downloaded missing or changed versions.

I should have them all in Calibre, so I could sideload them, but then I'd have two copies of all the books purchased from Kobo showing up. Is it possible to download the entire library with the Kobo Desktop and then sideload them to the reader with only one entry as though they had been downloaded via wifi?

Not really. The desktop app puts the books on the device in the same way that the WiFi does. And if you add books in any other way, they don't get synced via the Kobo servers.

If the time taken is the issue, use the Kobo desktop application to download the books and then sync from there. The download will still take a while, but should be faster. And the app syncing to the device should be faster as well. It does some checking against the server, but, it should just be validating the status and not downloading the books. It has been a while since I did this, so I'm not completely sure.

If you want to manage books from calibre and only have one copy, you need to put the books into the Archive on your account after downloading them. When they are in the Archive, there is no sign of them on the device or any Kobo app. The sideloaded book will be the only copy.

Another way is to use a different account on the devices. Buy the books using the current account and download them using either the desktop app (as kepubs) or from the library (as epubs) and add them to calibre. Then, create another account for the devices and sideload the books.