[Bill45]

Dear Friends,

After having used my Kindle Keyboard for a number of mos., I downloaded Kindle for PC in order to do some things I couldn't do with the Kindle reader alone. I thought this PC app was just giving me access to what was stored on my Kindle or the Kindle Archives. But someone at Kindle Support tells me that everything I can access via Kindle for PC is also taking up storage on my PC. (I had previously asked K. Support why I could not access everything on K for PC that I had stored on my Kindle reader - I was told that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.)

The support person I first mentioned said that the difference between K for PC and the Kindle Cloud Reader is that with the Kindle Cloud Reader I can read things online without storing them on my PC.

So yesterday I picked my least favorite Kindle book on Kindle for PC & clicked on "Remove from device." The book was in fact removed from my K for PC, but also from my Kindle reader - and was not found in the Archives, either. I was able to restore it on K for PC and thus on my Kindle reader as well, but if I have double storage, how can I delete a book from K for PC without deleting it from my Kindle reader also? I would probably delete all K for PC content if I could do so separately, if it is in fact taking up storage on my PC!)

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Bill

[brainout]

Bill45, on 03 September 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

Dear Friends,

After having used my Kindle Keyboard for a number of mos., I downloaded Kindle for PC in order to do some things I couldn't do with the Kindle reader alone. I thought this PC app was just giving me access to what was stored on my Kindle or the Kindle Archives. But someone at Kindle Support tells me that everything I can access via Kindle for PC is also taking up storage on my PC. (I had previously asked K. Support why I could not access everything on K for PC that I had stored on my Kindle reader - I was told that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.)

The support person I first mentioned said that the difference between K for PC and the Kindle Cloud Reader is that with the Kindle Cloud Reader I can read things online without storing them on my PC.

So yesterday I picked my least favorite Kindle book on Kindle for PC & clicked on "Remove from device." The book was in fact removed from my K for PC, but also from my Kindle reader - and was not found in the Archives, either. I was able to restore it on K for PC and thus on my Kindle reader as well, but if I have double storage, how can I delete a book from K for PC without deleting it from my Kindle reader also? I would probably delete all K for PC content if I could do so separately, if it is in fact taking up storage on my PC!)

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Bill

Hi, I'm a new Kindle for PC addict. Their operation is sometimes confusing. What OS are you on? If you're on XP, you can tell what of the Kindle stuff is actually ON your PC, by going to My Documents, and look for a folder named 'My Kindle Content'. Any Kindle stuff you've actually DOWNLOADED will be there. So when you 'remove from device', you only removed it from the device you were using when you clicked 'remove'. Since you now have TWO devices for that book, it was only removed from your PC, but not from your physical Kindle machine. And, it's still in Amazon, still readable in the 'cloud', still available to redownload to your PC. They call that, 'archive', in the Kindle menu.

The Kindle app for PC itself is a tad confusing about what's there and what's not. If you call up the app, you'll see in the upper left corner, 'All Items', 'Downloaded Items', and 'Archived Items'. ALL of these are actually stored in your Amazon account, so when you 'remove from device', you didn't remove them from your Amazon Account. You only removed them from your Kindle (whether device or PC). So then, 'downloaded items' reflects those still ON your device (or My Kindle Content, in your My Documents folder on your PC). The final category, 'Archived Items', represents stuff you've not downloaded, or which you REMOVED from local storage. So they are still accessible when you go to Amazon (i.e., when travelling).

It can be confusing if you download and upload to multiple devices. I got so screwed up doing that, I contacted Kindle, and its rep called me on the phone, to reconfigure things so everything was just on Amazon. Then, I deleted the registration for my other devices (or rather, she did it, I was having a brain fart). Finally, I disconnected the devices from syncing with the content. In other words, I CHANGED the default in Amazon, to make only one device download a book at a time. Whatever is downloaded to my Acer netbook, for example, I can't read from my desktop.

Amazon Default is that all your devices can read the same book at the same time. But since they sync to the last page read from the last device you used, if you made notes or highlighted on the other device -- all those changes are gone.

That disconnection is vital, if you like me, do a lot of highlighting and bookmarking in your books. Because, Kindle syncs your annotations, etc. to the cloud. So that's an important feature to keep in mind. If you are reading a book on your home computer you'll also want to read on your tablet or something, then maybe you should pick only one of them for reading all the time.

Yell at me if my reply didn't help you.

This post has been edited by brainout: 03 September 2012 - 10:11 AM

[smax013]

brainout did a fairly good job covering things. To kinda summarize things:

When you "buy" a Kindle book from Amazon (I say buy in quotes because that includes free Kindle books), those books are ALWAYS stored in your Amazon account. If you go to the Amazon website and select the "Manage My Kindle" link from under the "Your Account" drop down menu from any Amazon page, then that will list your entire library of "bought" Kindle books. The only way that I know of to every remove one of those books from your overall library is to use the pulldown menu from the Library webpage to "delete from library". Everything in that Library should show up on ANY of your Kindle devices (whether actual Kindle device or a device running a Kindle app such as an iOS device, Android device, Windows PC, or Mac) under the Archive section as the Archive section is showing all the books in your Library that are available for download to the device.

Once you download a device, then the Kindle book is actually on your device. At that point, the "sync" function should in theory kept page locations, highlights, and bookmarks up to date on ALL devices that have that same book downloaded...as long as you are not actively reading the same book on two devices at once AT THE SAME EXACT TIME (i.e. you have both devices sitting in front of you open to the same book or someone else is reading the same book as you from your account literally while you are actually reading it). Now, I know this is true for the current page location as I have read books where I switch from my actual Kindle to my iPad and back with both devices doing to the last page that I have read. I have not personally verified it with highlights and bookmarks since I don't currently use those much.

So, the point is that unless something weird is going on, deleting a book from a DEVICE should NOT delete it from your Amazon account and you should be able to re-download it to that device. I have done this a number of times.

[brainout]

smax013, on 03 September 2012 - 11:43 AM, said:

So, the point is that unless something weird is going on, deleting a book from a DEVICE should NOT delete it from your Amazon account and you should be able to re-download it to that device. I have done this a number of times.

Right. The only thing I could add is that I was extensively annotating a book, highlighting, etc., and my PC died. The book was downloaded on it. When I used another PC to start reading the same book again, all my highlighting etc. was gone. It only remembered the last page. So that makes me think the highlighting etc. are stored on the local computer where downloaded. But I can't test it now, because I don't know the file name where that information should be stored. The 'My Kindle Content' file names are in gobbledygook code, excepting those free books you get when you first register the device. So my backup of that file, doesn't help me now.

[smax013]

brainout, on 03 September 2012 - 11:29 PM, said:

smax013, on 03 September 2012 - 11:43 AM, said:

So, the point is that unless something weird is going on, deleting a book from a DEVICE should NOT delete it from your Amazon account and you should be able to re-download it to that device. I have done this a number of times.

Right. The only thing I could add is that I was extensively annotating a book, highlighting, etc., and my PC died. The book was downloaded on it. When I used another PC to start reading the same book again, all my highlighting etc. was gone. It only remembered the last page. So that makes me think the highlighting etc. are stored on the local computer where downloaded. But I can't test it now, because I don't know the file name where that information should be stored. The 'My Kindle Content' file names are in gobbledygook code, excepting those free books you get when you first register the device. So my backup of that file, doesn't help me now.

FWIW, I just tested highlighting and bookmarks on my iPad. After it synced with the Amazon system, those highlights and bookmarks in the book were available in the book when I opened it on my Mac in the Kindle app.

[brainout]

smax013, on 04 September 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

FWIW, I just tested highlighting and bookmarks on my iPad. After it synced with the Amazon system, those highlights and bookmarks in the book were available in the book when I opened it on my Mac in the Kindle app.

Great, that's how it's supposed to work. Had my computer not died, I'm sure it would have worked that way for me as well. So now we know it stores in the cloud, and that my problem wasn't local storage, but that the clean XP install changed the computer ID, and Kindle wouldn't know it was the same machine. Makes sense.

Whew.

[Bill45]

brainout, on 04 September 2012 - 03:22 PM, said:

smax013, on 04 September 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

FWIW, I just tested highlighting and bookmarks on my iPad. After it synced with the Amazon system, those highlights and bookmarks in the book were available in the book when I opened it on my Mac in the Kindle app.

Great, that's how it's supposed to work. Had my computer not died, I'm sure it would have worked that way for me as well. So now we know it stores in the cloud, and that my problem wasn't local storage, but that the clean XP install changed the computer ID, and Kindle wouldn't know it was the same machine. Makes sense.

Whew.

This post has been edited by Bill45: 06 September 2012 - 09:42 AM

[Bill45]

A much-belated THANK YOU to everyone who responded to my question about Kindle. I didn't understand it all, but I
understood enough of it that it helped me improve in handling my Kindle transactions.

Cheers,

Bill