# If you deregister / reregister, do you lose your collections?



## gdae23

I've so far run into one glitch setting up my Kindle Paperwhite which has nothing  to do with the KPW itself. I downloaded my Amazon books from the cloud, and then went to import collections from my Kindle Touch. Only some of the books went into collections, and some of the collections were way out of date, as I know I had changed some things. 

I quickly figured out that this was somehow related to the fact that I had to get a replacement K Touch in late February. The collections were up to date only to that point, but anything changed since then did not update on the KPW. 

It was too late to  call Kindle customer service last night (for me, not for them) although I probably will do so this weekend. I'm guessing that the replacement Touch is somehow not set up properly to store collections items in the cloud. 

I did consider deregistering and then reregistering  the Kindle Touch. When I checked some comments online, however, it sounded like if you do that, you retain all your books, but lose all your collections. Does anyone know if this is true?


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## northofdivision

from jacle2270:

"depends on how you de-register the device.if you perform a 'reset to factory default' then this will not only de-register the device from your account, but will also reformat/reload the default Kindle software; erasing all your content.but if you de-register any other way, then your content will remain, but the next person to register the device will not own the content and will not be allowed to download these pre-existing books to any other device, until they buy the book for themselves. "


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## Ann in Arlington

I would also note that there have been reports that if, after de-registering from one account, it is registered to a different account, all the books and collections will go away.  This was a newer model kindle and others using the same type of device have said they've done this and it didn't happen.  I've not had occasion to test it myself so I can't be sure -- just offer a caution.

I am pretty sure, however, that if you register it back to the same original account you won't have any problems.  AND, you can always import collections from other kindles on your account.  I like to keep a copy of Kindle for PC registered for just this reason. . .that way I always have a set of standard collections registered there and can import them if I need to do a reset on one of my other kindles.


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## gdae23

Thanks for your comments. I am still planning to use the K Touch, so I was interested in retaining all the books and collections currently on there. My reason for thinking of doing a deregister/register would be to essentially reboot the K Touch, in case that's the reason it's not syncing properly with the Cloud. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't lose access to the books, but I'm just not sure about the collections. 

At any rate, I do plan to call Amazon about it this weekend. If nothing else, now that I've discovered the problem with the Touch, I want to correct it going forward.

I also like the idea of keeping an updated set of collections on Kindle for PC. I hadn’t thought of doing that, since I only use the program once in a while. But I have plenty of room on my main computer, so that would be fine to do, and I plan to work on that this weekend as well. 

Unfortunately, my K Touch is the only Kindle I have right now that has all my collections on it and up to date. I haven't really been using my 2 earlier Kindles much, so I had stopped updating those. I have also been using the K4, but had only set some basic things up on there, enough to get by on daily trips away from home. So it doesn’t have all the collections.


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## SusanCassidy

If you haven't tried a reset, I'd try that first. Not a factory reset, just the regular reset.


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## gdae23

> Not a factory reset, just the regular reset.


Do you mean a Restart? I'll try that, although I've probably done that (for other reasons) at least a few times since February.


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## JuliMonroe

Ann in Arlington said:


> I am pretty sure, however, that if you register it back to the same original account you won't have any problems. AND, you can always import collections from other kindles on your account. I like to keep a copy of Kindle for PC registered for just this reason. . .that way I always have a set of standard collections registered there and can import them if I need to do a reset on one of my other kindles.


Having recently had to do two factory resets in a short period of time, I can state that Collections do remain. However, when you reload books, a Touch doesn't remember which collections they had been in, so you do have to go through "Add to Collections" again.

After that experience, I'm keeping my Touch pretty sparsely populated. I'm not convinced the charging problem is fixed yet, and I see the possibility of more resets or a replacement in my future. Which means I've stopped doing a "Send to Kindle" that doesn't include the archive option. I used to do that for short fanfics I didn't plan to keep or re-read. Now I archive everything, just in case I have to reload soon(ish).


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## gdae23

I just called Amazon Kindle customer service, and explained my problem with importing collections from my replacement Kindle Touch to the new paperwhite. I was told by the rep that when you get a replacement Kindle, it's no longer possible to back up collections. He told me I would have to do the collections over for the new Kindle. I wasn't thrilled to hear that, but there doesn't seem to be another way to do it. I do plan to set everything up on Kindle for PC to prevent this sort of thing in the future. But about half my content is non-Amazon, so that's another issue. Sigh... I love my Kindles, but Amazon still hasn't provided a good enough content management system if something like this happens. If they had an iTunes set-up, with the Collections being like playlists, it would be so simple to set up a new Kindle...

I would like to check and make sure what the rep told me is true. He was very polite, and trying to be helpful, but it sounded like he was out of the country. I know a number of people at one point or another have gotten replacement Kindles. Has anyone else run into a problem later on importing Collections to their next Kindle?

I also asked about the register / deregister process. He thought that the Collections would be lost and would have to be redone. But he didn't seem as sure about that.


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