Troubleshooting cannot see highlights in book even if My Clippings file is intact [Kindle Scribe]

[dnn3]

Hi there!

I used to highlight words and sentences on a pdf book, and the highlights were successfully saved on My Clippings file.

By mistake I deleted the book from Calibre, and then I put it back, but now I don't see anymore the highlights on the book even if the My Clippings file is the same as before.


What shall I do to see the highlights again?

[shamanNS]

MyClipping.txt is just a dumb log that records note-taking UI events.
The reading software reads and uses notes & highlights stored inside a (binary, non "plaintext) file that is / was inside book related ".sdr" folder, doesn't care about MyClipping.txt contents. When you deleted that book using Calibre it also deleted associated ".sdr" folder so that data is now lost.

In short, there is nothing you can do (other than maaaaybe try using some kind of "undelete" / "restore deleted files" typed of program [like "Recuva" for Windows OS] to scan Kindle drive on your computer and to check if that deleted data hadn't been overwritten already and restore it).

[tomsem]

Is there some reason you are side loading PDFs instead of using Send To Kindle (where it is converted to Print Replica)?

The latter will still save highlights and notes to My Clippings, but will also back everything up and offer direct export option. And allows Pen annotations on the pages.

[dnn3]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Is there some reason you are side loading PDFs instead of using Send To Kindle (where it is converted to Print Replica)?

The latter will still save highlights and notes to My Clippings, but will also back everything up and offer direct export option. And allows Pen annotations on the pages.

well, I didn't know that. Thanks!

[_kind_le]

I have similar problem but with books from amazon store. "My Clippings" file has highlight records for them but nothing in the books. .sdr folders are there and I'm pretty sure Calibre was not managing them.

[Quoth]

"My Clippings" is like a log file. The ebooks don't use it except to append to it when some highlight or annotation is added.

I found Kindle buggy for annotations so switched to Kobo.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by _kind_le

I have similar problem but with books from amazon store. "My Clippings" file has highlight records for them but nothing in the books. .sdr folders are there and I'm pretty sure Calibre was not managing them.

My Clippings is not 'source of truth' for annotations. As @Quoth says it is just a log file and is not indicative of current annotation state. If book does not show annotations there are not any.

If you are in habit of side loading amazon content with calibre and staying offline while starting to read and annotate, then it could be that sync is 'restoring' empty annotation state when you do connect because it thinks this is 'newer' somehow. Perhaps this can occur with direct downloads as well if you disconnect before starting to read and annotate, then stay offline for awhile.

(it seems similar to 'disappearing covers' issue some people have had. I've never been able to reproduce that but being offline for days/weeks may be a contributing factor from what I can gather from reports)

You can verify sync is working properly by using read.amazon.com to open amazon books and see if your on device annotations are getting backed up. And you can make annotations there and verify they get synced to device.

Side loaded (non amazon) content annotations are not backed up anywhere of course.

But would really need more detail from you to troubleshoot this.