Search in Text = your search timed out

[Siavahda]

Every time I try to run a search for a word across all my books, I get a number, but when I go to see the results, it's ALWAYS 'your search has timed out'. If I click the 'retry' option, it tells me there's no results, despite having 3000+ listed at the top of the page.

All my books should be indexed. I have 20GB free. I'm running 5.15.1.1 (and don't want to update because of the horror stories.) Restarts make no difference.

Anyone have any ideas? (If so, please explain like I'm five...)

[jackm8]

Have you recently added new books? I had a search related problem once, as I dumped a number of books to the device. It fixed itself on its own. No other ideas, sorry.

[Siavahda]

A couple, but they should have been indexed by now. When I check it says there's no indexing in-progress, so I don't think it's that... Thanks though!

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

Every time I try to run a search for a word across all my books, I get a number, but when I go to see the results, it's ALWAYS 'your search has timed out'. If I click the 'retry' option, it tells me there's no results, despite having 3000+ listed at the top of the page.

All my books should be indexed. I have 20GB free. I'm running 5.15.1.1 (and don't want to update because of the horror stories.) Restarts make no difference.

Anyone have any ideas? (If so, please explain like I'm five...)

I do not understand what you mean by '3000+ listed at top of page'. The top listing is from Library (title/author metadata). That has nothing to do with content search, nor do other results except for Text in Books.

What about in-book search, does that work?

I suppose it is possible to have so much content on Kindle that search times out. How many books you got on there?

Every single time there is an update there are people complaining here about this or that. That's what Mobileread is for (in part). There's not reason to think the latest is any worse in that respect. I am not having any issues myself. But I doubt it will solve your issue.

A newer Kindle might solve it, they are noticeably faster.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I do not understand what you mean by '3000+ listed at top of page'. The top listing is from Library (title/author metadata). That has nothing to do with content search, nor do other results except for Text in Books.

What about in-book search, does that work?

I suppose it is possible to have so much content on Kindle that search times out. How many books you got on there?

Every single time there is an update there are people complaining here about this or that. That's what Mobileread is for (in part). There's not reason to think the latest is any worse in that respect. I am not having any issues myself. But I doubt it will solve your issue.

A newer Kindle might solve it, they are faster.

I mean that when I searched for the word I was looking for - dreamed - the Text in Books had over 3000 results. When I go to check out the search results, the very top of the page says Text in Books (3237 items).

In-book search works perfectly.

I have roughly 3500 books on my kindle. But since they're not using even half the space available, I don't think that should be too many.

True, but it seems like every time I let my kindle update, something changes that I don't want changed - I've hated all the UI updates, for example. I'll try it if I have to, but it's going to be my last option.

Buying a new kindle isn't an option right now, alas.

[Sirtel]

The question arises, why are you searching for such a very common word across thousands of books? What would be the point, if the word occurs in basically every book of your library?

I found global search useful for rarely occurring words or rare place and character names. IMO it's completely useless to search for a character named John or a word like chair, table, talked, slept etc.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

I mean that when I searched for the word I was looking for - dreamed - the Text in Books had over 3000 results. When I go to check out the search results, the very top of the page says Text in Books (3237 items).

In-book search works perfectly.

I have roughly 3500 books on my kindle. But since they're not using even half the space available, I don't think that should be too many.

True, but it seems like every time I let my kindle update, something changes that I don't want changed - I've hated all the UI updates, for example. I'll try it if I have to, but it's going to be my last option.

Buying a new kindle isn't an option right now, alas.

You are searching for a word that's obviously in many of your eBooks multiple times. So it's no wonder you have such large results. There's nothing wrong with your Kindle's search that isn't user error.

[Siavahda]

I'm looking for 'dreamed' in an effort to find a book that works for the Dreams prompt of a book bingo reading challenge. I don't see how it matters.

So what you're saying is, when there's a huge number of results, the results don't display/the search times out?

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

I mean that when I searched for the word I was looking for - dreamed - the Text in Books had over 3000 results. When I go to check out the search results, the very top of the page says Text in Books (3237 items).

In-book search works perfectly.

I have roughly 3500 books on my kindle. But since they're not using even half the space available, I don't think that should be too many.

True, but it seems like every time I let my kindle update, something changes that I don't want changed - I've hated all the UI updates, for example. I'll try it if I have to, but it's going to be my last option.

Buying a new kindle isn't an option right now, alas.

Thanks for clarifying. 3500 books is a lot. There's your trouble.

Just because you can store 3500 books does not mean everything will work perfectly if you do that. It's there for bulky things like audiobooks and comics/manga, and because storage is cheap and they have to match specs of competing devices (which also do audiobooks and need storage for that).

Full content search is something most e-readers do not do (if any). Even Kindle app does not do it. But it has been a feature since the first (or at least second) Kindle, where storage was more restrictive. But probably unlikely Amazon will decide it is something to fix, if that's even feasible.

I'm not sure a new Kindle would solve it either.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Thanks for clarifying. 3500 books is a lot. There's your trouble.

Just because you can store 3500 books does not mean everything will work perfectly if you do that. It's there for bulky things like audiobooks and comics/manga, and because storage is cheap and they have to match specs of competing devices (which also do audiobooks and need storage for that).

Full content search is something most e-readers do not do (if any). Even Kindle app does not do it. But it has been a feature since the first (or at least second) Kindle, where storage was more restrictive. But probably unlikely Amazon will decide it is something to fix, if that's even feasible.

I'm not sure a new Kindle would solve it either.

I see. That makes sense, and yep, I'm not going to hold my breath that Amazon updates/improves the search function. I'll figure something else out.

Thank you for taking the time to explain!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

So what you're saying is, when there's a huge number of results, the results don't display/the search times out?

It very well might. I never searched for such words when I used a Kindle, so I don't know.

Calibre also has full text search now, but I think it only shows one result per book (for the rest you must search within the book), so that wouldn't help you either.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

I see. That makes sense, and yep, I'm not going to hold my breath that Amazon updates/improves the search function. I'll figure something else out.

Thank you for taking the time to explain!

I don't think I've ever had more than 300-400 books on device and that was only because you needed to set a 'default device' for delivery and even after they added 'cloud' I was too lazy to change it to that. It was annoying because the books I was actively reading would get buried by new purchases, and I'd lose track of things (there is still no 'started' filter or sort option).

Once that was gone, I've only downloaded books that I want to read in near future, more or less 'on demand'. Lately that's less than about 10. Even that seems to be too many, there is always something else I want to read before I get to #10.

In meantime I've marshaled everything into calibre for organizing and browsing, I download to calibre and convert to ePub as soon as I purchase, so I can choose to read it on non-Kindles (which I'm doing more of).

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by tomsem

In meantime I've marshaled everything into calibre for organizing and browsing, I download to calibre and convert to ePub as soon as I purchase, so I can choose to read it on non-Kindles (which I'm doing more of).

I do the same, but I also like to keep 2,000 - 3,000 books on my ereaders. That is because I never know what I want to read next and I want to have a wide selection available at any moment. I don't like to use wifi for downloading, and I don't like to constantly connect to my computer either; I like to keep lots of books on my devices instead.

It helps that Kobo has a "Reading" filter in addition to "Unread" and "Finished" filters. So the books I'm currently reading are never buried. Also none of my Kobos have issues with thousands of books, and collections + series are created/maintained automatically by Calibre.

I'm sure there are many people like me, just as there are many who like to keep their ereaders mostly empty.