# Seeing entire Amazon/Kindle library



## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

I believe I have seen this somewhere in this forum but can't seem to find the thread that speaks to this:

I want to know if there is some way to see ALL of my Amazon library.  I know about the "Manage Your Kindle" page, however, is there somewhere else within Amazon I can go and perhaps download as a csv file or some other format that will allow me to do an inventory of the Amazon books I have purchased.

I need to do a sync between Calibre and what's in Amazon to ensure I have ALL of my books from Amazon in Calibre.  THanks in advance for any thoughts on how to accomplish this.


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## Meemo (Oct 27, 2008)

There's kindle.amazon.com - you can mark books as read, to read, etc.  

There's also the "Your Media Library" area where you can see your digital collection - apps, mp3s, videos, Kindle books & magazines.  I's tricky to find - go to "Your Account", scroll down to Digital Content and click on "Your Collection".  In the Dropdown "Your Collection" box you can select to view "Books".  And you can click on "Print" to create a "Printable view" - I've seen folks say they turn that into a PDF and save it.  Mine's way too long to want to actually print it (I remember printing it long, long ago - before my daughter got a Kindle and started buying books like crazy!)

ETA:  I just tried creating the printable view, and when it was completed and the Print box popped up on the screen, one of the options was to save as a PDF, which I did.  I don't know if that's a Mac thing or not, but I don't think so.  It's something I don't pay attention to normally when I'm printing so I almost forget it's there as an option.  244 pages so no, I won't be printing it!


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Meemo said:


> ETA: I just tried creating the printable view, and when it was completed and the Print box popped up on the screen, one of the options was to save as a PDF, which I did. I don't know if that's a Mac thing or not, but I don't think so. It's something I don't pay attention to normally when I'm printing so I almost forget it's there as an option. 244 pages so no, I won't be printing it!


Don't know nothing about Mac's, but that is what I did on my computer. I just saved to PDF. Its an option under printers once you hit print. 
I first picked on the left top kindle books and then hit print on the top right. I would love to print an text only list, but this list gives covers so I ended up with 218 pages for my 1800 books. I am not going to print 200 pages . 
If they had a simple text only list it would fit more on a page.


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

Thanks for the advice - I would have to Save to PDF also as I have 6895 books with Amazon and that would be killing a lot of trees to print out.  I just need to do a listing where I could do a comparison.

Wish it could be downloaded into something like Excel but alas, no.  I have Adobe Reader and when I print, PDF is an option so I will go with that to comprise my list and do the sync.


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## Meemo (Oct 27, 2008)

chilady1 said:


> Thanks for the advice - I would have to Save to PDF also as I have 6895 books with Amazon and that would be killing a lot of trees to print out. I just need to do a listing where I could do a comparison.
> 
> Wish it could be downloaded into something like Excel but alas, no. I have Adobe Reader and when I print, PDF is an option so I will go with that to comprise my list and do the sync.


It takes a while to build that printable list - and my 244 page PDF was for just under 2000 books so yeah, yours will be a pretty lengthy list!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

If you are a member of Shelfari AND jump through all the hoops they ask for to get, I think, 80 or 90 per cent of your profile completed, you can import your Amazon books into Shelfari and then export them to a tsv that you can open in Excel.  EDIT:  To clarify, you can do the import into Shelfari without having a substantially complete profile, but you can't export unless you meet the 80-90 percent rule.  EDIT:  They seem to have loosened up this rule; you may be able to do it even with less profile completion.  Check the instruction in a later post.

This is the only way I've found...

Once I got the full profile completed, I did this, it literally took just a few minutes to do 2000 books.  There are reports that it may miss a few books, I haven't checked mine.

Betsy


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> If you are a member of Shelfari AND jump through all the hoops they ask for to get, I think, 80 or 90 per cent of your profile completed, you can import your Amazon books into Shelfari and then export them to a tsv that you can open in Excel.
> 
> This is the only way I've found...
> 
> ...


Of course, if you don't have Excel, you're apparently screwed. I just tried opening the TSV file from Shelfari in Google Docs spreadsheet and it just says "No preview". Then I tried in OpenOffice's spreadsheet software and it forced it to open in the word processor instead where the data is all over the place. Why doesn't Shelfari give you a choice of different formats to export as, like Goodreads does? Once again, Shelfari seems useful on the surface but winds up being a big waste of time for me. You know, I STILL can't figure out how to do a simple thing like add a cover to a book on my shelf - and people say GR is not intuitive? Shelfari is a nightmare. Sorry, /rant.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> If you are a member of Shelfari AND jump through all the hoops they ask for to get, I think, 80 or 90 per cent of your profile completed, you can import your Amazon books into Shelfari and then export them to a tsv that you can open in Excel.
> 
> This is the only way I've found...
> 
> ...


You can import from Amazon to Shelfari even if you're not jumping through all the hoops. (I'm only at 65% complete on my profile, and that's as complete as I intend to get.  ) It's actually the first thing I did. Took a while to do that first import. Now, I re-import every couple of weeks to get any books I've purchased recently. The nice thing is it links to Amazon so you don't need to think up yet another password!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

I didn't mean to imply that you have to jump through all the hoops to IMPORT to Shelfari from Amazon. You have to jump through all the hoops in order to do the whole process I described; eg, to be able to EXPORT from Shelfari into the tab separated file. I'll have to clarify my original post.

And it's a standard tab separated file...I would think it would be importable into any number of applications. Let me look into it....

EDIT: According to this, you have to import the file into Google Docs, not "open."
http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40608

Also, if it opened in a Word Doc in Open Office (why didn't Open Office ask which app you wanted to open it in?), since it's tab deliminated, you should just be able to insert global tabs and get everything to align.

I'll fire up the laptop in a sec and try it out in Google Docs.

Hope this helps.

Betsy


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I didn't mean to imply that you have to jump through all the hoops to IMPORT to Shelfari from Amazon. You have to jump through all the hoops in order to do the whole process I described; eg, to be able to EXPORT from Shelfari into the tab separated file. I'll have to clarify my original post.
> 
> I'll fire up the laptop in a sec and try it out in Google Docs.
> 
> ...


Betsy - I am a member of Shelfari - while you are firing up the laptop, now that all the books have imported into Shelfari how do I export as Excel spreadsheet. Not very clear from Shelfari? Help? and Thanks!

P.S. Amazon Media Library was being extremely uncooperative today and could just be the # of books I am trying to gather. So this Shelfari solution is on point.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

chilady1 said:


> Betsy - I am a member of Shelfari - while you are firing up the laptop, now that all the books have imported into Shelfari how do I export as Excel spreadsheet. Not very clear from Shelfari? Help? and Thanks!
> 
> P.S. Amazon Media Library was being extremely uncooperative today and could just be the # of books I am trying to gather. So this Shelfari solution is on point.


No, I had to search in the Help forums...

When you go to Shelfari.com, you should be on your Shelf. On the right, it should tell you how complete your Profile is. I _think_ it has to be at least 80% complete. Might be 90. I've seen both numbers.

On your Shelf page, it should say "Your Shelf," the number of books in your shelves, and have a little drop-down arrow to the right of the number of books. Click on the little arrow. If you've made the cut, an option down the bottom should be to export your library.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

OK, to bring the .tsv file into Google Docs from your hard drive, go to your Google drive (drive.google.com).

Click on Create, then select Spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet will open.

Choose File, then Import, then click in the browse box, find the file on your hard drive, click on Open.  You'll go back to the Import window.  Click on Import.  The file will appear in the Preview window.  Click on Import again. When the file has been imported, it will "File Imported Successfully.  Open Now" under the browse box.  Click on the Open Now link.  

Mine imported perfectly.

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Just making a separate post to say I'm annoyed that we have to jump through all these hoops; I wish I could just do this from Amazon....but at least there's a way.

Betsy


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

OMG!  Betsy when you said Hoops, you were not kidding!  This is totally ridiculous just to download a csv file.  I'll be here all night!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

chilady1 said:


> OMG! Betsy when you said Hoops, you were not kidding! This is totally ridiculous just to download a csv file. I'll be here all night!


Once your profile is at the required level, the actual export is quick. It took me several days to get the profile level up to the 80-90 percent (mine is at 100 percent now).

Note that it is a tsv file (tab separated) not csv (comma separated).

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> I didn't mean to imply that you have to jump through all the hoops to IMPORT to Shelfari from Amazon. You have to jump through all the hoops in order to do the whole process I described; eg, to be able to EXPORT from Shelfari into the tab separated file. I'll have to clarify my original post.


Ah! Well, that's weird. . . . why should it matter whether or not I've uploaded a picture or picked discussion groups? 

FWIW, my profile is at 65% and it has the export option and seemed to let me click it. I'd sure like someone with an even lower percentage to check this.  'Cause it's just weird to me that it requires all that to do it.

I don't want to put it in google docs, though -- I don't use google docs. . . . .

I was able to download it and open it with excel. I saved it first, then opened Excel and then opened the file from within Excel. I just had to tell Excel that, yes, it's delimited, by tabs and then it imported just fine. All I have to do is resize the columns.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

That's good to know; they've loosened up the requirement, perhaps.  I haven't seen any word about it on Shelfari. *shrug*

As for the requirement, I think the idea was that they wanted people to participate in the site, not just use them as a transit station.  The requirements mean more of their database gets populated.

As for Google Docs, I only put the Google Docs instruction in for people like history_lover who don't have Excel and don't know how to get it into Google Docs.  I have Excel, as I stated in my first post on this topic, and it was easy-peasy.  I just dragged it from my folder onto Excel and it opened as a tab-delimited file.

Betsy


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

UPDATE:  The Shelfari option didn't work.  Per Betsy's post - they do make you go through hoops to get the books loaded and then exported.  I get why, it was just a pain and for some reason I was at 67% but it wouldn't let me download.  Maybe the restrictions are different - not sure.  I know Ann mentioned that she was at 65% and had no problems but it just wouldn't download.

Therefore, I went back to my Media Library on Amazon, sorted by author (although this is not alpha by LAST NAME, go figure) and was able to save as a PDF.  WHEW!  What a PIA!  But done.  Thanks again to everyone's GREAT advice, I wish there was an easier way.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

chilady1 said:


> UPDATE: The Shelfari option didn't work. Per Betsy's post - they do make you go through hoops to get the books loaded and then exported. I get why, it was just a pain and for some reason I was at 67% but it wouldn't let me download. Maybe the restrictions are different - not sure. I know Ann mentioned that she was at 65% and had no problems but it just wouldn't download.
> 
> Therefore, I went back to my Media Library on Amazon, sorted by author (although this is not alpha by LAST NAME, go figure) and was able to save as a PDF. WHEW! What a PIA! But done. Thanks again to everyone's GREAT advice, I wish there was an easier way.


So the export didn't work for you? The option wasn't there? Or the option was there and it didn't work?

Betsy


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> So the export didn't work for you? The option wasn't there? Or the option was there and it didn't work?
> 
> Betsy


Option wasn't there.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Sorry to hear that...

Betsy


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

Ugh that site is so confusing. My profile is at 50% and there is little chance it will go higher. I find something in the drop down called export your books, I assume that is it? I have no clue. 

So I downloaded a tsv file but have no clue what to do with it. I don't have excel, or anything google. So when I click on the downloaded file it opens in notepad. That of course means its a total mess.  . Plus its sorted by edition number. I had no option before download to sort by anything else. 

I just can't figure shelfari out. I have yet to find a place where I can create my own book shelves. 
And right now I can't even find my books anymore. I can't even see any options to get to them. I am on some page that shows featured stuff. 

So Amazon has 2 messes now with listing books. My account is a mess and shelfari is a mess.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Atunah said:


> Ugh that site is so confusing. My profile is at 50% and there is little chance it will go higher. I find something in the drop down called export your books, I assume that is it? I have no clue.
> 
> So I downloaded a tsv file but have no clue what to do with it. I don't have excel, or anything google. So when I click on the downloaded file it opens in notepad. That of course means its a total mess. . Plus its sorted by edition number. I had no option before download to sort by anything else.


That's essentially what happened to me too - though I DO have Google Docs and also OpenOffice, which has a spreadsheet program. But NEITHER would open the TSV anyway! It would only open in notepad or word processors in which the data displayed in a mess.

If you don't have any spreadsheet software, you wouldn't be able to open the more normal CSV file either though. But I work with CSV files and don't have this problem I've had with TSV so I don't know why Shelfari has to be awkward about it.



> I just can't figure shelfari out. I have yet to find a place where I can create my own book shelves.


You have to use tags instead. Essentially, the same thing (Goodreads shelves are basically just tags that are called shelves) but honestly, I never noticed an ability to add tags until it was pointed out to me! You have to click "edit" under the book cover and then there should be a tab that says "tags & more". Once you add some tags, they'll show below your book shelf at the bottom of the page (not on the left where your shelves are listed). It's just sooo not intuitive to me - I thought the "edit" button under the book cover looked more like a way to edit the book details, not your own personal settings/review for the book.

My main issue is I can't find a way to add a book cover to a specific edition. Several of my books imported from Amazon don't have a book cover, I think because their ASIN has been retired since I bought the book. Shelfari says you can add book covers but every time I do it, it just uploads the cover as a new edition, I can not get it added to my current edition. SO annoying and it's definitely the final nail in the coffin for me - I will never be active on Shelfari.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

chilady1 said:


> UPDATE: The Shelfari option didn't work. Per Betsy's post - they do make you go through hoops to get the books loaded and then exported. I get why, it was just a pain and for some reason I was at 67% but it wouldn't let me download. Maybe the restrictions are different - not sure. I know Ann mentioned that she was at 65% and had no problems but it just wouldn't download.
> 
> Therefore, I went back to my Media Library on Amazon, sorted by author (although this is not alpha by LAST NAME, go figure) and was able to save as a PDF. WHEW! What a PIA! But done. Thanks again to everyone's GREAT advice, I wish there was an easier way.


I wonder if there's a 'time on site' thing? I've been officially 'on' shelfari, for over 2 years.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I will note that, in re: the tsv file, when I did a 'right click' to 'open with' it didn't give me any spreadsheet program as an option. Just WordPad and notepad. that's silly, in my opinion as it's a file designed for spreadsheets and I _have_ more than one spreadsheet program on my computer.

I was able to open it in Excel by first opening excel and then finding the file and opening through Excel. . . .when I'm home again tonight, I'll see if I can do a similar thing with Open Office -- which is a free program and has a spreadsheet component -- and let y'all know what I find.

I agree Shelfari isn't hugely useful for me as is. . . .I'm keeping up with it in hopes it will improve.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> I will note that, in re: the tsv file, when I did a 'right click' to 'open with' it didn't give me any spreadsheet program as an option. Just WordPad and notepad. that's silly, in my opinion as it's a file designed for spreadsheets and I _have_ more than one spreadsheet program on my computer.
> 
> I was able to open it in Excel by first opening excel and then finding the file and opening through Excel. . . .when I'm home again tonight, I'll see if I can do a similar thing with Open Office -- which is a free program and has a spreadsheet component -- and let y'all know what I find.


That's exactly what I did with OpenOffice - I opened the spreadsheet program, went to "file > open" and selected the TSV file... and instead of opening in the spreadsheet, it FORCED the word processor open and displayed in that instead. I use CSV files in OpenOffice's spreadsheet with no problem.


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## backslidr (Nov 23, 2012)

I just thought I'd try it and see what happens. On the Home Shelfari page where it says Your Shelf on the left I clicked the arrow to the right of it and at the bottom of the list it says Export Your Books. I clicked on that and it took me to another page and the download began without clicking anything else, using my Chrome browser. I went to where the file downloaded, right clicked it, clicked Open and it came right up in Excel. Of course you have to have Excel for that to work, but I did want to say that my Profile on Shelfari is only at 55% and it worked just fine.

Edit: I just went to Google Drive and imported the file, right clicked it and chose Open With Google Sheets and it came right up, no problem.


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

Ann in Arlington said:


> I wonder if there's a 'time on site' thing? I've been officially 'on' shelfari, for over 2 years.


Ann - I was thinking the same thing!


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## backslidr (Nov 23, 2012)

chilady1 said:


> Ann - I was thinking the same thing!


I've only been on Shelfari for 3 months and my profile's at 55% so I don't know why it doesn't seem to be available to you.  Weird.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

So I tried again with that tsv file. I don't have a "open with" option when I right click, so I opened Open Office and then opened there. It looks just as messy and unreadable than with notepad. Actually notepad looks a bit better.  

So its pretty useless to me.


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## Brownskins (Nov 18, 2011)

Meemo said:


> There's also the "Your Media Library" area where you can see your digital collection - apps, mp3s, videos, Kindle books & magazines. I's tricky to find - go to "Your Account", scroll down to Digital Content and click on "Your Collection". In the Dropdown "Your Collection" box you can select to view "Books". And you can click on "Print" to create a "Printable view" - I've seen folks say they turn that into a PDF and save it.


This is the way I did it. Once you get your printable view, save PRINT it as pdf (select Adobe pdf as printer). Open in  The pdf file will open automatically in your screen and then save as Excel file. Everything is dropped into Column A. What I did for my list was to sort it alphabetically. All titles start with "Title:" and all authors start with "Author:". I created 2 lists - one by Title and one by Author. I then replaced all "Title:" and "Author"" with (blank), and that left me with 2 lists in one Excel file - one by Title (arranged alphabetically) and one by Author (arranged alphabetically).

Hope this helps. (BTW, Adobe software comes in various types, so the above process may or may not work for you, but it worked for me. Also, note that I have a smaller universe of books -only 500). You guys must have a lot of disposable income to buy thousands of books!!  Hopefully some are lendable so I can borrow... he he he (like Betsy did for Wool and Psyche27 did for Trusting God) - I am grateful I got to borrow those excellent books.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

history_lover said:


> That's exactly what I did with OpenOffice - I opened the spreadsheet program, went to "file > open" and selected the TSV file... and instead of opening in the spreadsheet, it FORCED the word processor open and displayed in that instead. I use CSV files in OpenOffice's spreadsheet with no problem.


Wow! Well, that's just ridiculous.

My conclusion is that the export from Shelfari is not quite ready for prime time! 



7vn11vn said:


> I just thought I'd try it and see what happens. On the Home Shelfari page where it says Your Shelf on the left I clicked the arrow to the right of it and at the bottom of the list it says Export Your Books. I clicked on that and it took me to another page and the download began without clicking anything else, using my Chrome browser. I went to where the file downloaded, right clicked it, clicked Open and it came right up in Excel. Of course you have to have Excel for that to work, but I did want to say that my Profile on Shelfari is only at 55% and it worked just fine.
> 
> Edit: I just went to Google Drive and imported the file, right clicked it and chose Open With Google Sheets and it came right up, no problem.


And see, I DO have Excel. But it wouldn't open automatically in it -- wanted to go to Notepad or Wordpad.

So, again, maybe not ready for prime time.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Some programs require an "import" rather than "open" for generic files.  That's what Google Docs required, and it opened perfectly.  I don't have Open Office but you might check to see if there's an Import function.

Betsy


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## Dragle (Dec 10, 2011)

You might try renaming the file extension as .txt (if tab delimited) or .csv (if comma delimited) since the office software probably doesn't know what .tsv means and defaults to trying a text editor/word processor.  In my experience, Excel wouldn't just open a tab-delimited file unless the extension was .txt.  

I went to Shelfari and imported my stuff--maybe I'll see if I can export the list this weekend when I have some time to play with it.  It didn't import the date purchased or my ratings, though, and I noticed that printing the list from Amazon's media library as described earlier doesn't show your ratings either.


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## Andra (Nov 19, 2008)

I have been asking for an export function from MYK for several years.  Write to Amazon and ask for this feature.  They have to wake up one day and realize that they must do something to help those of us with large amounts of content.


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## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

Andra said:


> I have been asking for an export function from MYK for several years. Write to Amazon and ask for this feature. They have to wake up one day and realize that they must do something to help those of us with large amounts of content.


Good idea and I will!


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## Brownskins (Nov 18, 2011)

If anyone wants to convert the file output of "Your Collection" into Excel, just PM me.  If you send me the pdf (or whatever format you have), I can do it for you.


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## webhill (Feb 12, 2009)

FYI, i just joined Shelfari after reading this and started importing my books from Amazon. Not only did I not have to build up my profile or whatever before downloading my list of books, I didn't even have to finish importing. I accidentally did it only 45% of the way into the import, so now I have a list of less than half of my books  I am too impatient I guess. I will try again when it is done importing.


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## Vicki G. (Feb 18, 2010)

Just for grins, I did this exercise in making a list of all my books from Amazon.  Did the "make the list" thing, then exported it.  These things go into Downloads on my computer (Windows 7).  I got the same Notepad and Wordpad that Ann got so I then opened Excel (starter version only), then looked for the list file.  Had to direct Excel to look for "all files" so it would show the .tsv files and then opened the list file.  Of course, it was a bit of a mess because one has to adjust column widths, etc.  I would delete many of the columns if I were printing it out, starting with ASIN but then that's just me.  I have one book that has a VERY LONG name and pushes that column out 3/4 of the page so I would probably manually edit that name but other than that, looks like it's good to go for me.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Vicki G. said:


> Just for grins, I did this exercise in making a list of all my books from Amazon. Did the "make the list" thing, then exported it. These things go into Downloads on my computer (Windows 7). I got the same Notepad and Wordpad that Ann got so I then opened Excel (starter version only), then looked for the list file. Had to direct Excel to look for "all files" so it would show the .tsv files and then opened the list file. Of course, it was a bit of a mess because one has to adjust column widths, etc. I would delete many of the columns if I were printing it out, starting with ASIN but then that's just me. I have one book that has a VERY LONG name and pushes that column out 3/4 of the page so I would probably manually edit that name but other than that, looks like it's good to go for me.


Great, Vicki! Glad it worked for you...

Betsy


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