# Would collection headings go back on a replacement?



## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

I'm just wondering ...

IF I end up "upgrading" to a 3G K3, I would obviously delete all my books from my present WiFi version.  If I put all my books on to a new K3, would my collections headings be there as well, or would I have to recategorize all my books?  That would be very frustrating as I have a lot of books, and they're not all direct downloads from Amazon.

Help, please....

Thank you,

Lynn


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

If I recall correctly, this is the way it works: Your non-Amazon books would have to be redone. The procedure for Amazon books is to re-download the books from Amazon, and then import the Categories. The books you have already put in Categories should automatically go to the right one. But you have to import the Categories last. I did it the other way round, and had to redo all my books.

Mike


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

jmiked said:


> If I recall correctly, this is the way it works: Your non-Amazon books would have to be redone. The procedure for Amazon books is to re-download the books from Amazon, and then import the Categories. The books you have already put in Categories should automatically go to the right one. But you have to import the Categories last. I did it the other way round, and had to redo all my books.
> 
> Mike


"Import" the categories? Did you mean that literally, or would I still be able to drag and drop?


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

There's an option under Archive to import (the actual word may just be 'add') collections from another Kindle on your account. Thus, you would want to get the new Kindle (let's call it Kindle B) before you deregister the old Kindle (Kindle A) if at all possible.  Then you can load the books onto Kindle B, and import the collections onto Kindle B, all of the books, including the non-Amazon books, should then automatically be put into the proper collection.  A few may not, sometimes there are glitches, but at least the majority should be -- if you put books on Kindle B first and then do the import.

But if you deregister Kindle A first, then you won't have it listed in your account to import collections from, and you'll have to re-do it all from scratch on Kindle B.  At least I think so; I've only ever still had the old Kindle on my account at the time I was transferring to my new Kindle so I won't *swear* that it doesn't still keep the collections info archived even without having Kindle A registered on your account anymore.....


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Steph H said:


> There's an option under Archive to import (the actual word may just be 'add') collections from another Kindle on your account. Thus, you would want to get the new Kindle (let's call it Kindle B) before you deregister the old Kindle (Kindle A) if at all possible. Then you can load the books onto Kindle B, and import the collections onto Kindle B, all of the books, including the non-Amazon books, should then automatically be put into the proper collection. A few may not, sometimes there are glitches, but at least the majority should be -- if you put books on Kindle B first and then do the import.
> 
> But if you deregister Kindle A first, then you won't have it listed in your account to import collections from, and you'll have to re-do it all from scratch on Kindle B. At least I think so; I've only ever still had the old Kindle on my account at the time I was transferring to my new Kindle so I won't *swear* that it doesn't still keep the collections info archived even without having Kindle A registered on your account anymore.....


Ohhhhh! That's very, very important information. That includes books of my own (not from Amazon) that are on my hard drive?


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I did this 3 times, I had 3 replacements. I have 1300 books and lots of them are not from Amazon. They did not go into the collections like the Amazon ones after importing collections. Even some of the Amazon ones didn't end up in the collections.


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Well, all I can say is that from my own personal experience, my non-Amazon books from my hard drive would also sort into the proper collections.  This happened twice, importing from the K2 to the DX (that I no longer have), and importing from the DX to the K3 (rather than from the K2 to the K3).  I had almost no trouble from the DX to K3; I had more trouble from the K2 to DX, where a lot of books, both Amazon and non-Amazon, didn't go into collections properly and I had to re-sort them manually. I think cleaning them up for the DX caused that transfer to go smoother for the DX-K3 transfer somehow.


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Atunah said:


> I did this 3 times, I had 3 replacements. I have 1300 books and lots of them are not from Amazon. They did not go into the collections like the Amazon ones after importing collections. Even some of the Amazon ones didn't end up in the collections.


That's exactly what I'm worried about. Sigh! I think I have a lot of work facing me. I've been wondering about that. I had a feeling the K3 wouldn't recognize the headings. That's horrible!


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Hmmmm.  It doesn't sound like we're all in agreement on this.  I hate the thought of recategorizing a LOT of books again, but I may have to.  Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll "import" correctly?  How can that be, though?


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Note one thing you can do -- put a few books on (maybe a mixture of both Amazon and non-Amazon) and import collections, see how well it works.

Then put more books on -- and RE-IMPORT collections.  It does the same thing.  You can keep doing it in small steps if you want, just re-import collections each time, because the new ones you put on each time *won't* automatically sort until you re-import collections again.

I actually did it this way to control things a little better, just doing one collection at a time -- that way, if any books *didn't* sort automatically after importing collections, I knew which collection they needed to go in without wasting a lot of time looking things up.


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Candee15 said:


> Hmmmm. It doesn't sound like we're all in agreement on this. I hate the thought of recategorizing a LOT of books again, but I may have to. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll "import" correctly? How can that be, though?


I was typing my last reply when you posted this, so didn't see it. As to not being agreement and how can it happen -- all I can say is 'software glitches' and 'stuff happens'.  Yeah, I know that doesn't help, but I know others have had trouble importing onto other devices and still others haven't, and others have had intermittent problems -- that spells software issues to me.


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Steph H said:


> I was typing my last reply when you posted this, so didn't see it. As to not being agreement and how can it happen -- all I can say is 'software glitches' and 'stuff happens'.  Yeah, I know that doesn't help, but I know others have had trouble importing onto other devices and still others haven't, and others have had intermittent problems -- that spells software issues to me.


I agree with you about software glitches one hundred percent! I dooooo appreciate your advice, though. Thank you so much.


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## KayakerNC (Oct 7, 2009)

Steph H said:


> 'software glitches' and 'stuff happens'.


Kind of reminds me of certain "road-trips" in the past. 
_*"We're NOT lost, it's an ADVENTURE!"*_


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

There's a file on your Kindle in the system folder called collections.json which holds all the current information on your collections. If you copy that from your old to your new K3 (after downloading all your books) that will do the same as importing your collections. I haven't done it that way, but it's _possible_ that it might put all your non Amazon books into their correct place too. Worth a try?


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Here's Amazon's page regarding collections: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200375840

They address the bit about moving between devices but say nothing about books that you didn't purchase from them. Of course they wouldn't want to address _that_ possibility!


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Linjeakel said:


> There's a file on your Kindle in the system folder called collections.json which holds all the current information on your collections. If you copy that from your old to your new K3 (after downloading all your books) that will do the same as importing your collections. I haven't done it that way, but it's _possible_ that it might put all your non Amazon books into their correct place too. Worth a try?


I don't see that file on my Kindle. Any idea why?


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Alice Y. Yeh said:


> Here's Amazon's page regarding collections: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200375840
> 
> They address the bit about moving between devices but say nothing about books that you didn't purchase from them. Of course they wouldn't want to address _that_ possibility!


That's true <g>. Thank you.


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## Steph H (Oct 28, 2008)

Candee15 said:


> I don't see that file on my Kindle. Any idea why?


Are you sure you looked in the system subfolder? It's not in the root directory.


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