Glo Can't save notes on Kobo Glo

[jackthereader]

I recently bought a Kobo Glo and I noticed that I can't save notes. I can add (attach) notes to bookmarks but if I close the book and reopen it the notes are gone. Is this normal for the Kobo Glo? Or is it just my unit?

[Mrs_Often]

It might just be a firmware bug. I don't use notes myself so I haven't come across it. I do however recall there being a bug about notes not being saved properly if you don't exit the note in a specific way. I think it was the difference between hitting the "X" and hitting "Done" or something. I'm sorry I can't check right now as my device isn't with me. If you search this forum you might find the bug in question.

[jackthereader]

I checked again and the problem seems to happen only with bookmarks (not highlights) and only with epubs (and pdfs) which are downloaded from the internet. I just tested two books that I purchased from Kobo some time ago and adding notes to bookmarks works fine.

[Lynx-lynx]

Jack you may also be interested to know that Calibre has a feature called Fetch Annotations that works only for Kobo readers.

Plug in your Kobo and view:

Send to device (Irrespective that it says 'send' to device, the program copies 'from' the device)

Fetch Annotations (experimental) - it's the last entry

When I've used Fetch Annotations it's been successful - but - they've all been Epubs.

You'll find them in the Metadata section of Calibre - as part of the general book info where you see the synopsis etc of the book.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackthereader

I checked again and the problem seems to happen only with bookmarks (not highlights) and only with epubs (and pdfs) which are downloaded from the internet. I just tested two books that I purchased from Kobo some time ago and adding notes to bookmarks works fine.

There were a couple of long standing bugs with annotations that were fixed in 2.3.1. And until last the week, I would have said everything was working OK. But, I have been reading a couple of books and recording corrections as annotations and have lost a few. I haven't worked out a pattern, but the two or three times it has happened, I have lost all the annotations on the book.

In each case, I had made some annotations while reading, used the annotations to correct the source and deleted each annotation. At the end I had no annotations left. Then when reading the book again, I made more annotations. The next night when I was at the computer, I discovered there were no annotations. But, when reading the book again the annotations were saved and there when I went to do the fixes. I don't know what was different about my use of the device when I lost vs didn't lose the annotations.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by jackthereader

I recently bought a Kobo Glo and I noticed that I can't save notes. I can add (attach) notes to bookmarks but if I close the book and reopen it the notes are gone. Is this normal for the Kobo Glo? Or is it just my unit?

Originally Posted by davidfor

There were a couple of long standing bugs with annotations that were fixed in 2.3.1. And until last the week, I would have said everything was working OK. But, I have been reading a couple of books and recording corrections as annotations and have lost a few. I haven't worked out a pattern, but the two or three times it has happened, I have lost all the annotations on the book.

In each case, I had made some annotations while reading, used the annotations to correct the source and deleted each annotation. At the end I had no annotations left. Then when reading the book again, I made more annotations. The next night when I was at the computer, I discovered there were no annotations. But, when reading the book again the annotations were saved and there when I went to do the fixes. I don't know what was different about my use of the device when I lost vs didn't lose the annotations.

I also had problems with the Glo 'losing' highilghts and bookmarks, but on other occasions they would be there. Yep bit of a lottery dip.

Anyway, I gave up on the Glo for non-fiction - I use the Sony 650 - which is stable and reliable.

I only read fiction on the Glo, because I don't need to highlight or dog ear pages etc.

[jackthereader]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Jack you may also be interested to know that Calibre has a feature called Fetch Annotations that works only for Kobo readers.

I'll give it a try and see if Calibre can find something... Thanks Lynx-lynx.

Originally Posted by davidfor

The next night when I was at the computer, I discovered there were no annotations. But, when reading the book again the annotations were saved and there when I went to do the fixes.

Sounds like the annotations feature is not very reliable. It seems that everything works fine with the kepubs though.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackthereader

I'll give it a try and see if Calibre can find something... Thanks Lynx-lynx.

Calibre is reading the annotations from the devices internal database. If the device can't display them, then calibre won't find them.

Sounds like the annotations feature is not very reliable. It seems that everything works fine with the kepubs though.

There will be a pattern to the loss. My suspicion is that it is related to whether I go back to the home screen before connecting to the PC or something like that. Hopefully I'll see a pattern so I can at least avoid the loss of data.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Calibre is reading the annotations from the devices internal database. If the device can't display them, then calibre won't find them.

Not directly related to the quote but I think somehow interesting. If one highlights or adds notes to passages which are situated in a range that is referred to in the navigation document by a fragment identifier (e.g. part_0002.xhtml#aliquam) the ContendID in the Bookmark table sometimes contains the fragment identifier, and sometimes it does not. If it does contain then chances are that the device does not display the concerning passages in the main text as highlighted or only sporadically displays them so. They are however listed in the "Annotations" list. So sometimes one can have the impression that a note/highlight is lost even it is actually there. Removing the fragment identifier from the ContendID makes those highlights/annotation behave normally. I did not notice side effects by this, apart from the chapter headings in the annotation list, up to now, but cannot exclude them.
I don't know by what it is triggered that the fragment identifier gets included in the ContentID. I suspect it might be related to how one gets to the passage, for instance whether by simple turning pages, using the TOC, by a word search. (Edit [some days later]: I understand it better now, cf. this post.)
Note: My observation refers to KT.