Loading books to your new Kindle

EDITED: We've learned much this week --so I have revised this. The revisions are in caps. Play around with your new toy, download one or two books from your Archived Items list, play with all the features first --the web browser, pdfs, etc. Get that out of the way because the transition of a lot of books at once will make your K3 very busy. You will need to plug it into power and leave it alone to index after you load the books.

This is my personal opinion from reading the forum. I'm not an Amazon employee and I don't have any internals knowledge of the Kindle.

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There is NO all in one step method. You CANNOT copy the Amazon books from your old Kindle to computer and then copy them to your new Kindle. (You can do this with Samples, and with books from other sources, but not your Amazon books).

IT WOULD BE BETTER TO DO THESE IN BATCHES OF 50-75 BOOKS AND WAIT FOR INDEXING TO COMPLETE AND THEN DO ANOTHER BATCH. I DID ALL OF MINE AT ONE TIME, BUT THAT MAY NOT BE WISE.

Each Amazon purchased book is encoded with one device id at download and only opens there. Your new Kindle must get a new copy from Amazon.There are two methods:

1. FROM THE ARCHIVED ITEMS LIST on the new Kindle: On the K3, it should already be registered, if not, register to the same account. Turn on wireless. In a short time after connection is made the Archived Items list will show all the purchases. Move the cursor to a title, flick right for ADD TO HOME, it will download. You don't have to wait for the download to finish. BUT WAIT FOR THE PAGE NUMBER AT THE BOTTOM TO CLEAR -- THEN You can press the BACK key at this point to go back into the list to choose another title, flick right, and repeat until you have all the books you want to reside on the K3.

2. FROM THE MANAGE YOUR KINDLE PAGE at the website: Go to Manage Your Kindle page at the ebsite, find title under Orders, and choose SEND WIRELESSLY TO...choose the K3 in the drop-down. Click. Move to next title, repeat until all you want are chosen. If wireless is already on, they will be downloading while you select others, or you can wait and turn it on later.
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INDEXING: YOUR KINDLE BUILDS AN INDEX OF EVERY WORD'S LOCATION IN EVERY ITEM. This uses a lot of battery power and seems to be taking so much power that other functions are freezing. You need to let it finish indexing before you play around with the web browser and pdfs. To see if your Kindle is indexing, on the HOME page, type in a nonsense word (like jfhahk) and flick right to Search. If it is indexing it comes back ITEMS NOT YET INDEXED (X). You can click there and see the list. The current book is in very light grey. If hours later it is still the same book, you may have to delete the book and let indexing move on. You can download this book again later. If you can't get rid of the book by deleting it from the HOME page in the normal manner, you may have to hook up via USB and delete it from the Documents folder. If it is finished indexing, you can download another batch of books.

I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE TO INDEX --IT DEPENDS ON THE SIZE OF THE BOOKS. BUT IT IS BEST TO PLUG IN AND LET IT WORK. NOT A REQUIREMENT, JUST A SUGGESTION. IT MIGHT FINISH 50 BOOKS IN 30 MINUTES OR IN 5 HOURS. I CAN'T PREDICT.

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IF YOU DO NOT HAVE WIRELESS:

If you do not have wireless available to get the copy, you can download from the Manage Your Kindle page with Transfer via Computer, Specify the K3 as final destination, and Save File. You can copy those new downloads to your new Kindle.

But you will LOSE ALL YOUR NOTES, HIGHLIGHTS, BOOKMARKS and Last Place Read in your Amazon books with this method. There are files on your old Kindle that can be copied over and contain these items. Copy every file with the extension .MBP or .TAN to your computer, and copy all of them to your new Kindle. You must do this copy BEFORE you try to open any of the books on the new Kindle. If you forget to do this before you open the books, you will have to go onto the new Kindle via usb and delete all the mbp and tan files for the Amazon books you just opened. Then copy the ones from your old Kindle.

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COLLECTIONS

You can import your previous Collections assignments by pressing MENU, View Archived Items. The first item on the list is ADD OTHER DEVICE COLLECTIONS. Click, specify which device and everything should end up in the correct Collection. BUT THIS WORKS ONLY FOR THE BOOKS YOU HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED. I had some troubles getting Topaz books to go back into their Collections. That may be my fault. But you might have to re-assign all the Topaz (.azw1 or .tpz) books to their Collections.

YOU CAN DO THIS EACH TIME YOU FINISH A BATCH OF BOOKS OR WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE TRANSITIONED ALL YOUR BOOKS.

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SAMPLES AND NON-AMAZON BOOKS

To move these to your new Kindle, just hook up your old Kindle to your computer via usb cable. Set up a folder (maybe on your desktop). Copy all of the samples (they have EBSP in the filename) EXCEPT THE ONES WITH FILE EXTENSIONS .azw1 and .tpz and .tan to this folder on your computer. You can also copy all of the books you got from other sources to your computer, too. They all have two files -- the .mobi or .prc or .pdf or .txt is the book and the .mbp has your notes, highlights, bookmarks and last place read. Put everything in your folder.

IF YOU CONVERTED PDFs THROUGH AMAZON, THEY WILL AVE .azw FILE EXTENSIONS. YOU CAN COPY THOSE TO THE NEW KINDLE BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO RECOGNIZE THOSE FROM THE FILENAMES AS YOUR OWN FILES. MOST .azw FILES WOULD BE AMAZON BOOKS AND COULDN'T BE COPIED.

Safely eject the old Kindle from the computer, and detach the usb cable. Hook up your new Kindle by the usb cable and copy/paste all of the files in the folder into the DOCUMENTS folder on your new Kindle. Be certain to let the write finish ! Then safely eject your new Kindle from the computer and detach the usb cable.

THESE WILL ALSO INDEX. CHECK TO MAKE SURE IT FINISHES.
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EDITED TO ADD: It looks like you cannot copy samples with the extension .azw1 or .tpz to your new Kindle from your old. These are topaz files. They must have DRM. All other samples were fine if just copied.

On Collections importing : If you dowload more books from Archives, you must import the collections again. It only categorizes the books already ON the new Kindle. Bring back more books, redo the Add Other Device Collections.

I did 680 books at one time and all of the above worked. I have edited to note problem areas. INDEXING TOOK OVER 24 HOURS BECAUSE THIS WAS OVER 700MB OF CONTENT AND I DID IT ALL AT ONCE.

Thanks for posting this again, FfB....good info! Also, for those who are in the later waves (like me...I'm 3rd wave) and might forget to look for this post, they might want to tuck this link away for future reference:
http://www.unofficialkindlesupport.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=55

One more option I wish I'd realized I had from the Archives folder:

Instead of clicking the title which both downloads and opens the book, you can instead push the controller to the right and then click Add to Home, which only downloads the book. It saves the time to open it.

I don't know if you save any time that way because of the extra push. At least on the K3 you have that nifty download progress indicator.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was going to start searching for this topic.

Shirley -- I never noticed that either. I'll edit my instructions. Wow.

Fool for Books and ShirleyKat,
I transfered my books and collections from my wounded DX to a DXG I decided to get, and when doing the selection of most books from my Archived items list, I clicked on one and then wondered if pressing the BACK button would let me keep choosing while they all downloaded.

I had them all in TITLE order so I could readily see where I was.

Sure enough. The BACK button takes you back to where you were on the list and you can get another Achived one, press BACK and continue on like that.

It's very fast. With some 152 Amazon purchases in that list and wanting about 137 of them, I was through with the transfers from the servers in no time. It was actually faster than doing it on the ManageYourKindle page (for me, at least).

Then I made sure it was plugged into the charger so the 4 mammoth Mobi Reference encyclopedias being indexed along with everything else wouldn't drain my battery.

So, it's better now. That was with the DXG. Should work the same with the K3.

I then imported my DX Collections and everything went where it should. Very nicely done, Kindle Team!

- Andrys
http://kindleworld.blogspot.com

Thanks! Very helpful. Will the Collections transfer automatically when you choose the faster method?

Fool,
Just clarifying something you said in your op.

In #2 you state:
"Go to Manage Your Kindle page at the website, find title under Orders, and choose SEND WIRELESSLY TO...choose the K3 in the drop-down. Click. Move to next title, repeat until all you want are chosen. If wireless is already on, they will be downloading while you select others, or you can wait and turn it on later."

Does that refer to the 3G AND the wifi?
I don't have wifi at home, but I'd like to transfer titles on my computer to my K3 ahead of time, head up to Starbucks and turn it on, and sip something hot while I dig in.

Fool for Books,
I guess Amazon decided most re-downloads would be for other users -- otherwise why not do what they have said before they'd do. When you RE-download a book to another device, your notes for the book you bought would go with it, UNLESS they think the alternate device-user is another person (even if the book is downloaded to a computer due to lack of wireless).

It's all odd because even when sending to your computer you still would need to specify the device getting it and the DRM would take note of that.

I already finished my transfers for DX to DXG. Did you try this in the last couple of weeks to see if they changed the process maybe?

Thanks for this topic thread and the guide + advice.

- Andrys
http://kindleworld.blogspot.com

Andrys --you would notice quickly if they were giving you the notes and highlights on a Transfer via Computer download. They would be sending two files --the book and the .mbp/.tan. They don't do that.

Eclectic -- I won't have my K3 until Friday, but the way the User's Guide reads, it will stack up your requests until you turn on wireless. This would try to connect to wifi first and only go to 3G if you move out of range or don't choose a wifi network.

But let me make sure we are clear. You are going to request wireless downloads FROM your computer (Manage Your Kindle page) and then head up to Starbucks and turn on wireless and login to their Wifi? You aren't going to download anything TO your computer.

Susan --after you download the books, MENU, View Archived Items. The first item will be ADD COLLECTIONS FROM ANOTHER DEVICE. Click that and specify which device. It will import the list and all the books will be placed in their correct Collection.

Thanks for reminding me, I'll edit above.

Edited to say: This is in answer to Fool's Question:

Right.
I just used the drop down menu on the Manage Your Kindle page to deliver an unread book to my K3, and it's listed as ready to load whenever I'm in wifi range. But...if I do the same with a book I've already read (and have lots of bookmarks on), will it deliver the book WITH the bookmarks?

Fool for Books,
I asked because am puzzled by the rationale and I'd finished my transfers and didn't want to change them and am very behind. I still have to transfer my personal documents which are a lot more than the Amazon purchases and those will need to be manually put into collections.

Plus get some things done for tomorrow. I do still have a safe copy of my auxiliary files and need to back up all of the stuff on the old DX before returning it for one that I can sell.

So I just wondered if you'd tried it very recently, hoping they changed their process since the send is explicit for a certain device and they'd send the auxiliary files direct to it if they could.

Good to know they withhold it from a computer-send though mine are always to Kindle devices.

Do try getting files from Archived Items using the Back button after
clicking on one. It even stops the opening of books (at least that I could see).

But it looks as if, although I ordered on 7/28, I won't have the K3 to distract me tomorrow though I went w/ 1-day shipping. I did see other 7/28's were shipped and turned green. :-)

- Andrys

Eclectic -- Yes, as long as you do it wirelessly.

For some reason it doesn't deliver the auxillary file (mbp/tan) doing Transfer via Computer, but it always delivers the latest one it has when done wirelessly. That would be the last time you had wireless on and did synch&check from the old Kindle.

OK.
Thanks, Fool.

Andrys -- I ordered 7/28 and didn't get an email notice until about 90 mins ago. Mine is coming Friday, but I chose 2-day.

FfB,
So, if I'm lucky, I'll have paid for 1-day from the same order date and get it the same day as the 2-day selecters. I -always- make the wrong choice ;-)

I think I'll be lucky to get it Monday... There's a pending charge on my credit card for something above the correct amount, but Chase does not identify the pending stuff. grumble grumble...

Andrys --it might have already left the warehouse and you haven't gotten the email. What does YOUR ACCOUNT say?

And on the Transfer via computer issue --I don't understand the rationale. They could easily explain that you will get two files to save, but for some reason they don't. I knew you didn't get two files, and yet when I was testing this to write it up, I was stunned to realize that you only get the notes when you do this wirelessly. But then, Amazon would only HAVE the notes if you had wireless service. Maybe that's the rationale.

FfB
My muzzled account says only what it's said for about 8 hours or more:
Shipping SOON. Being "prepared" for shipment. Just can't estimate it yet, blah blah blah.

I just read that someone who ordered it on the 29th is getting it tomorrow. Say! :-)

I guess I'll live, but I hope this doesn't mean it will take DAYS in limbo.

Re the odd Amazon non-download of auxiliary file, it could be they provide for their being none existing because you're not on wireless at the moment, but then they could also provide for the other scenario that you've had wireless from time to time (!) People do go places, wireless fails from time to time, and then there's vacation time when you don't want not to have your annotations and bookmarks but you're not around your normal wireless etc.

I'm sure glad you noticed that!

Good info, guys - thanks!

How can I save this discussion for when I get my K3?

Bookmark it in your browser to come back to the thread.

Or open a Notepad file on your desktop. Highlight the whole post of instructions, right-click COPY, move over to the empty Notepad, right-click Paste. Then under FILE, choose SAVE AS... and give it a name you will remember. (I don't think you can save the whole thread this way unless you copy each individual post. )

I am here everyday and I intend to either keep bumping the thread or re-posting it often. So many people want to do this, and it is a common misconception that you can copy from Kindle to computer to new Kindle. You can't. I'd like to save people some frustration.

Bumping for the late owls like me.

Fool, do you work for Amazon or Kindle CS? :) Thanks for your hard work. BTW you may be surprised.