Organizing small pdf files on Kindle

[greeneggs]

I decided to try a Kindle DX Graphite and so far I'm really amazed by the screen, but I'm somewhat struggling with organizing my files.

On my computer I have folders of notes, slides, and papers and everything is organized by papers, but there's hundreds of small files in there. Most of the files are less than 5 pages. I'm really happy with Calibre for managing my bigger pdf files and books, but I'm not sure how to use it for managing tons of small non-book files.

Is there anyway I can drag and drop my folders and have the structure maintained on the kindle? When I do this with the USB it looses all of the formatting and it becomes a mess to find the files I want since they have similar/vague names and the way I kept track of everything before was by the folder they were in.

Does anybody know how I can easily bulk organize my files into maybe collections and sub-collections based on the folders they're in?

Thanks!

[greeneggs]

I have a major problem now. My Kindle isn't responding or doing anything. Nothing works. it won't open the dictionary, the guides, any ebooks - anything. I can't use the browser (I type in an address and select go to and it just stops until I press home again), and I can't access the settings, or turn wireless off (I do it and then I go back to the menu and it's still on, like I never did anything). I can navigate with the cursor fine in home and rotate the kindle to landscape mode, but that's all that works. Also my collection doesn't show up now. I have no idea what I did.

Sorry for the length, but I'm going to explain everything I did in a fair amount of detail:

I decided to skip putting all my small files on for now and using calibre I converted and attempted to put on my larger ebooks (1mb-15mb each). I converted them and didn't realize that it made a couple of them 20x larger in filesize and I transferred them all over to the kindle. I let it go for like a half hour until it transferred (a bit over 1gb total), however when I tried to open them they wouldn't work. I noticed that the file sizes were so large and so I went back to home by pressing the button and then used the calibre to delete everything off the kindle, delete the huge mobi files it created, and finally reupload the pdfs onto the kindle. However now none of my books show up at all. I've since tried deleting all the pdfs without using calibre, and putting it back in (of course in the documents folder) but still it won't work. If I hook it up to calibre and ask it to list what's on the device it tells me what it should have and I can open them from the device just fine using calibre. I've also tried deleting the calibre metadata in the root folder. I've turned it on and off many times now and also connected and disconnected it from the computer. None of the other function work either, except moving the cursor around, rotating it, and turning it on/off.

Anybody know what could have happened? I never disconnected it or closed calibre while it was working; and I haven't really done anything except add and remove some books so far. Is there anyway I can reset my kindle back to default settings or something?

[ATDrake]

You can do a manual restart by sliding the power switch and holding it for a count of at least 15 seconds before releasing. This often clears up a lot of problems. Unplug your Kindle from everything beforehand.

If that doesn't work, I think (but I'm not sure, it's been awhile since I've done this) you can also do a manual reset to factory defaults (normally accessed via Menu/Settings) by doing the slide/hold thing for even longer (at least 30 seconds, maybe more; count ve-e-ery slowly).

You'll lose everything on it, but it should be a clean slate afterwards (if I'm remembering the correct emergency procedure).

From the sound of it, your Kindle seems to have locked up while indexing. If you put a lot of files on it (or very large files) at once, then everything slows down while it processes them for the purposes of search.

Best way to do this is to only move a few things on at once, or if you're doing a big batch of transfers, leave it plugged in overnight (indexing really drains the battery) and it'll be taken care of while you sleep.

Hope this helps.

ETA: Oh, apparently it seems they might have changed things for the DX. You should probably use the instructions in either post #9 or #13 in this thread on resetting Kindles.

But the simple 15-second procedure does still seem to work on my K2i.

[greeneggs]

Thank you very much! I had to do the full reset by holding the home button as I powered up, but it's all fixed now. Thanks for the tip about indexing also.

[madmaxmedia]

I would love to see more organization features on the Kindle. I read in a 'top 10 feature request' thread that something was coming in 2010?

Tags, folders, anything will do. If I get a K3 I would like to use it for novels, articles (of different subjects I would like to organize by), and various work related documents. So being able to organize them somehow would seem like a big benefit.

EDIT- Okay I guess you can do collections now, although you have to organize them on the Kindle (which doesn't help OP.) Does this work for PDF files, etc. too?

[loveangel]

thanks for this info ..these are some new things for me

[guiyoforward]

take a look at this for pc side collections:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93204