UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Have they changed the wifi?

Someone also happened to me - when I went out of the country then came back - it screwed up?

I will have to wait until I visit the cafe again to see if restart helps.

The cafe have two wifi connections and I tried both today.

I'm in a village so finding wifi is tough. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks for your help.

Okay, sorted crisis over.

Via Amazon I changed my location back to Greece. And was able to download two new free books but only from the Amazon.com site.

Does anyone know if it's possible to change the displayed name or author of a book? For example I've downloaded a lot of books from free sites and the like, and on my computer I've named them all properly but when they're on my kindle they sometimes have no title or author or something... the book I'm reading at the moment has a title of THE and an author of 1! And there's quite a few with titles like in2 and so on...

Also, is there any quick way to move books into collections or is one at a time the only way?

I've read something about using calibre to rename books over in the zoo bit I've no idea how it works.
Hopefully one of our other members can help?

I believe you can shift a page at a time into a collection. I've never done it though. Something about going into the collection, right clicking on the five way, hit add books then highlight a page?

Li'l help please?

If that second bit is true about moving a whole page to a collection, I'm personally hunting down the person who made that and slapping him with a freaking raw fish for not making it clearer.

And yes, calibre is what most people use to change the names. Never heard it done any other way. If it doesn't bother you that much I'd let it go. Calibre is a bitch to work.

I don't even really know what Calibre is *hides* I suppose I can deal ;)

I really hope there is a way to move a whole page at a time! I have too many books for my patience!

No need to hide. I don't really know either. It some sort of free program you can download to help manage your books. I've heard very mixed reviews about it.

You need a degree to work it. The manual alone took me ages to understand. I gave up eventually. Wasn't worth the brain pain.

I think maybe the easiest thing to do will be to make a list of all the weirdly named books, and stick that to the inside of my kindle cover! XD (And lists of series as well!)

All the info about a book, the title, author and sort order are collectively known as meta-data.

Calibre allows you to change this metadata. It also allows you to convert ebooks from one format to another. However, without certain plugins calibre can only manipulate ebooks that have not been protected with drm (digital rights management).

Calibre is easier to use than it might look. It does take a bit of practice though.

Simon is an uber smart dork though :)

Also a geek.

a deek? or a gork?

Can I ask if you have converted certain books from your laptop/pc to Kindle, can you re-add them again at a later date or won't they be able to get re-added?

I downloaded 3 pages of books I converted from RTF to my Kindle and I want to take them off for now and re-add them at a later date. Can I do that?

Thanks for any replies x

I don't understand your question Fiona. Sorry.

I added books my dad did so we can transfer to his and my Kindle. It's 3 pages worth of poetry and I was wondering if I could taken them off for now and re-add them another day when I didn't need the space for other kindle books.

As long as you don't delete them of your laptop then yes, you can remove/re-add as many times as you want!

Thanks Elle x

Elle to the rescue! Love your cape, darling.

Louise-Lesley (Elle) wrote: "You need a degree to work it. The manual alone took me ages to understand. I gave up eventually. Wasn't worth the brain pain."

That'll be why I keep giving up on Calibre then - I dropped out of uni :D And I thought I was a geek lol (my other hobbies include genealogy and web design!)

It's fabulous isn't it Patti? :P


And yes, Katie. For something that is meant to be an easy way to catalogue your books, it's horrible to work! I suppose you just 'get it' or you 'don't'

So Elle, I can delete the 3 pages of Kindle books (dad's poetry) and as long as it's still on my laptop, I can re-convert to Kindle and then that's it?

Erm...

Can't you just archive it?

It stays on here I think Patti for Archiving?

Is it really dumb of me to ask what exactly archiving means on a kindle?

It stays visible on your Kindle in the Archived Items folder but isn't readable, you have to re-download it from 'the cloud' - it's stored on Amazon's servers

Thanks Katie, I'll do that instead. Does it affect my items on the kindle to how many is on there?

If you can archive it, yes, I know some books I have converted won't let me archive them.

I thought it was something like that! Does that apply only to Amazon-bought ebooks then, or can I archive and later on 'unarchive' any ebook?

I will check after deleting them and see what happens x

My dad's books have been archived x

i think if it goes into kindle format it can archived but the ones from like smashwords and stuff won't be.

I can't get Smashwords, so all mine are Kindle format only x

ye i only use Kindle too. just easier (and i'm lazy)!

Is there a maximum number of books that a Kindle will take?
I've been downloading the free books but these last few days nothing has gone on to my Kindle, although they are continuing to download onto my Kindle on PC.

I have more questions but I'll stick to one at a time :)

Yes, there is a maximum your kindle will hold. The keyboard holds about 3500, so they say. Not sure about the baby kindle. I think I read it's something like 1500 or 2000.

Kindle for pc is unlimited, I believe. Or only limited by the amount of free memory on your computer.

Your archive is also unlimited. If you'd like to free up space in your kindle library, just send a load of books to the archive.

Next question, please? :)

I wouldn't put too many on the Kindle itself though. It tends to slow it down if you fill it too much!!

So true, Elle. I'm sitting here right now sending a load to archive. Been meaning to do it for ages.

I am still sorting through my archive. I've trimmed near 300 books of it in the last few weeks but it's so boring going through it - at least 'manage my kindle' has sped up though!

I want to get my KK tidied before I travel as I've ordered a new baby kindle for myself. The aim is to have only one book at a time on that one so I can take notes without it freezing all the time.

My aim is to have my archive empty so when i put something into it, i know it needs to be deleted of amazon.

(i use instapaper for online articles and fics so i delete a lot of personal documents. atm i'm using a different collection for ones i need to delete but be far easier to just stick em in the archive)

Can't you just delete as you finish reading?

they changed it so now personal documents go into the archives and are kept instead of deleting straight away. which is a right pain in the ass.

Oh yeah, so they did. Can't shut that off, eh?

Thanks, I think you may have answered my next question, indirectly - I am having a lot of trouble with my Kindle freezing - like several times during one reading session. I have sensed that this is caused by the free books I've been downloading. But how can I stop them downloading, other than turning off WiFi - and then I have the same problem when I turn it back on to download something. I'd like to download to PC only and move books to my Kindle Touch as and when I want to read them.

I have only got about 600 books on my Kindle so it shouldn't be refusing to download - should it?

And can someone explain what is meant by archiving so I know what I'm actually doing please.

And now that's 3 questions and I'm going to get confused!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm. I'm not familiar with the Touch, sorry.

If you can find the 'delete from device' function, when you click it it sends the book to archive. Then all you need to do is send it back to the kindle when you're ready to read it.

When you download a book from amazon, you can choose where you'd like to send it in the drop down menu. If you chose kindle for pc, the book will go there but will be available in the archive on your kindle.

Archiving means sending the books off into the ether where amazon keeps them safe for us but they no longer take up memory space on the device.

600 books shouldn't be causing problems though. Have you tried doing a hard reset?

You should be able to find how to reset your touch by googling 'how to reset (or restart) a kindle touch.

Next question? :)

Another thought. Your books may require indexing which requires the wifi to be on.

Indexing means the kindle goes through every word in every book and files it somehow. It's what makes the search function work.

Leaving it charging overnight with the wifi left on every once in a while is a good idea.

Hard reset - is that where I hold down the button for 20 secs? Yes, done that dozens of times, very frustrated by having to do it so often.

Before I archive any books I'd like to be sure I can get them off my PC again - I have 2 books there that I currently can't get on to my Kindle. They were sent for reviewing but I can't get them off the PC and on to the Kindle. I have the wire but moving the icons doesn't seem to do anything. Where should I be moving the icons to? May need a Touch expert here perhaps??

The trouble with being a technophobe is that half the time I'm not even sure I know what I'm trying to ask! But I'm definitely archiving all your replies!!

Interesting - I've been using 3G to download, I only just got the WiFi to connect yesterday. I'll plug it in again and see if anything happens.
Thanks.