Mike M. wrote to ask some questions about the My Clippings file and suggested I could respond in the blog -- a very good idea, so here are his questions.Q: If I remove an Amazon book from my Kindle are my marks and bookmarks deleted from the "My Clippings File"?
No, they remain in that file. The marks (notes, highlighting, and bookmarks) are copies of what you did for your books and are actually retained in the
So, even when the book is inadvertently deleted, copies of the annotations and bookmarks are still on the Kindle in straight-text format for your use.
(This is why, in the infamous '1984' incident here, the notes taken for homework actually were still on the kindle.)
The actual marks that are used with your Kindle book are kept in a small associated file for each book, for reference by the Kindle when the book is opened.
The My Clippings 'book' file is a pure-text file (unlike the book's associated marks-file, which has placement coding in it). The My Clippings file is made so that the customer can edit or print, at any time, the clippings that were saved while reading.
To do that, you attach the Kindle to your computer, via the USB cable that is part of your power cord, and use the file manager to copy that file to your computer. You can then edit or print that copy as you would any text file.
Q: If I delete a non-Amazon book from my Kindle are my marks and bookmarks deleted from the "My Clippings File"?
No, those also remain in the My Clippings file, which is a separate file kept for you so that you can work with it, apart from your book. Each note or highlight that you make is automatically copied to that file for use in editing and printing.
When editing a copy of the file, I recommend highlighting, copying and pasting the file's text to a WORD doc or any text-editing program you use that allows you to retain the bolding for the headings, which look like this:
" Your highlight at location 1596 "
as that will make your actual notes easier to differentiate from the headers.
Q: Once I load the "My Clippings" text file onto my computer:
Is there an easy way to assemble all the clippings and marks from a single book into one location?
Unfortunately, there's no Kindle utility for that. However, there is a WORD macro made by a Professor that will sort the file and display the notes BY book. From the professor's description:
Here’s what the macro does:If you try it and like it, let him know.
* Creates a table of highlights, notes and bookmarks.
* sorts the table by book and location in book
* removes a (now useless) column
* changes the font to a smaller one
* adjusts the column sizes
Q: Can I delete some of the information and copy the altered My Clippings file back on my kindle?
Yes, you can, and it's a good idea. However, if you decide you prefer to start afresh and you remove the file from the Kindle, the Kindle will create a new one the next time you make an annotation or a bookmark. Anyone doing that should definitely keep a backup-copy on the computer of what was done in the past in case it's ever needed.
Q: If I delete the My Clippings file and start fresh, will I still be able to view marks previously made in a book by searching the "My Marks" from the book menu?
As long as your book remains on the Kindle, yes, you'll be able to do that because the actual marks referenced by the book you open are in the small marks-file that is associated with the book.
As a bonus -- although it's not a feature that Amazon advertises -- a private, password-protected annotations webpage is made at Amazon for each customer, if the customer has Annotations Backup enabled. This feature backs up, to Amazon servers, annotations for books purchased from Amazon but not annotations for any of your other books or personal documents.
You find that Kindle setting with Menu button/Settings/Menu button.
If you delete an Amazon-purchased book (which then just retains it in your Archives at your Amazon page) and then decide you want to download it again, your annotations will also be archived along with the book and will be downloaded as well whenever you need to re-download that book.
I've written a detailed explanation of how to use that very useful Amazon annotations webpage tool.
(However, if you ever want to permanently delete an Amazon book from your Amazon highlights -- you'd need to re-buy the book if you wanted it again -- that's also possible. Some found they hated some books they'd bought and strongly requested that permanent-removal feature.)
Hope that helps!
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Great info! I did try the Word Macro from Professor's Notes site (by Steve Brady) and it did work to sort and organize the My Clippings content by book. Very helpful, thanks!
ReplyDeleteGary,
ReplyDeleteThanks for getting that info back to us.
My own 'My Clippings' file is now half a gig, on my little K2 (I also have a DX which I use more) and it's amazing how much room I still have on the K2 with something like 150 HOME entries on it.
I hadn't used the Macro because I mainly use the search capability but will go ahead and use it soon.
What some don't know is that you can write yourself memos on it by opening it, going to the end, and making a note. I preface them with key names such as TODO so they are easy to search. One can also edit current notes and expand them so I do that too.
I have one that's 'groc' which means groceries I need to remember. I should probably mention this in Tips :-)
Am looking fwd to apps we can get later for really nice notes though!
Thanks again!
I have edited the text in "my clippings" but the changes do not appear when I look on my kindle....Did I do something wrong? Thanks - I'm a newbie.
ReplyDeleteJulene
ReplyDeleteDid you copy the file to your computer to edit it?
If so, did you copy back to your Kindle the edited file ?
It has to go under 'documents' again.
I don' know what drive it was in when you edited it -- whether it was still in the Kindle and you edited it directly (probably not) or you edited it on your computer, saving it to a known folder on the computer, and then copying that over to the Kindle...
Thank you Andrys. I tried both ways. I connected the kindle via usb and edited the file in documents on the kindle. Then I tried copying the file to another file on my computer, editing it there then putting it back in documents.Maybe I messed it up...
ReplyDeleteWell, you said that you couldn't see the changes, so it's probably not harmed.
ReplyDeleteWhen you edited it, did you make sure you saved it in a specific folder? With the first try, just editing the file that is on the Kindle, all you would have needed to do was to just 'save' and it should have worked.
Is the copy on your computer changed?
I looked in the file in "documents" on the kindle. The changes are readable there, but when I look at the note, it's not there. Maybe that's it. It's a numbered footnote, not a clipping.... Does that make it different even though it's in the clippings file?
ReplyDeleteYes. As I mentioned in this writeup, the My Clippings file is just a COPY of the annotation you made, so that you can edit it or print it (or even email it) from your computer.
ReplyDeleteThe BOOK's annotations (the real, original ones) are in the book's associated file that keeps the marks we make. Those are not pure text files but they are referenced when you open the book.
What you need to do is open the book, go to that place in the book where you made a note you want to change FOR your actual book notes(if you want the changes to be made to the actual -book- )
and then press Menu button to go to "My Notes & Marks"...
When you find the note, and put your cursor there, you get the choice at the bottom of the screen to 'Edit' it ---and it lets you into the notebox to edit it if you press the 'Enter' or 'Return' key as shown at the bottom...
I hope that works for you... Let me know.
I'll try - thanks.
ReplyDeleteThank you SO MUCH for the tip about kindle.amazon.com
ReplyDeleteThat is an exceptional resource and it's kept up to date whether notes are made by my Kindle or iPad. I don't understand why Amazon doesn't make this resource more visible to users. Clearly they've invested a lot of effort in it.
Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge for the benefit of others - much appreciated!
-Ken
Ken,
ReplyDeleteSure thing. We've had it for a year but they had plans for the page. In the coming software update version 2.5 due to be received by most by the end of May, they are now 'highlighting' the annotations webpage feature because the highlighting portion is part of the new popular aggregate (and anonymous) highlighting for any Amazon book. I will turn off seeing the "popular highlighted passages" on the Kindle though. Not interested in seeing that while reading.
They're starting to show up on the webpage though.
There's actually a website that converts your kindle clippings into Microsoft Word, Excel, PDF files. Check it out, it's fantastic:
ReplyDeletewww.clippingsconverter.com
It's very user friendly, and best of all it's for free. I love it, and use it loads as I'm a student - clippings make great study notes!
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIt takes me maybe a minute to convert My Clippings to a doc file but I seldom want to convert it to an Excel file. However, there is a very useful Macro file that converts the file to one that is organized by BOOK instead of all the notes in chron order and uses Excel format. If you search on 'clippings macro' in one of the two search boxes on the page, it'll bring that up.
I wrote once about cutepdf tool - in which you can print anything 'to pdf' and it converts it to that.
The front page of this conversion tool should change the word "Adode" to "Adobe."
Will try it out someday and anyone reading this post + comments can try it out.
As a student, why do you want study notes in Word doc format? Or Excel? The MyClippings file has an odd format and layout for that... I'm probably missing something obvious though.
Any automated tool can be useful, though. Thanks for the tip.
Greetings! I know this is somewhat off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could find a captcha plugin for my comment form? I'm using the same blog platform as yours and I'm having trouble finding one? Thanks a lot!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou use the same platform? It's Google's blogger.com or blogspot.com ...
The Captcha comes with it, and you can customize it in your Settings.
Is there a way to do this wi the kindle app for the iPad? Not going online because it was a borrowed book and my notes are not there on either of our pages but they are still visible on the iPad. There must be data saved somewhere somehow ?
ReplyDeleteFr. Michael,
ReplyDeleteThere seem to be some glitches right now. I have a report that the notes appear on an actual Kindle if you have one but that they don't always make it to the online site.
The kinds of things they're trying to do are really complex, which is why other ereader makers don't attempt them, and I think there will be oddities like this.
It's supposed to go in your online annotations page, at least if done on your Kindle. But it should work with annotations done on Kindle for ___ apps also. They're saying that what works with a purchased book from Amazon should work with a library-borrowed one.
Will be watching this. Let me know if you find out more, if you don't mind.
Another quite useful trick is converting your Kindle clippings to more common formats such as Excel, Word, or PDF file. I think such formats are more convenient as they can be opened/edited/viewed, etc more easily using common and a wider range of devices.
ReplyDeleteYou can use simple tools such as clippings converter (http://www.clippingsconverter.com/) to convert your clipping files.
I'm not sure if this comment section is still being observed, but I was wondering if I could get some help on My Clippings:
ReplyDeleteI saved my clippings to a document and then deleted the data off the original in hopes that I could start afresh. But now when I highlight/ take notes through my books, they don't appear in My Clippings. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks in advance.
I have a Kindle Touch (WiFi only).
Anonymous,
DeleteI guess your Clippings file isn't being recognized and may be corrupted. Did you really just delete the data from the original, editing it on the Kindle? Or, on a computer and then sending back the file to your Kindle with data erased?
It's best to copy it to your computer for archiving or editing and if you don't want it on your Kindle *remove* the file from your Kindle. Then a new My Clippings file will start up and should behave normally.
Have you tried going to http://kindle.amazon.com to check out your books and annotations that are saved with them? That probably works only when your Kindle's My Clippings file works, though, but I don't know.
Let me know how this turns out for you.
Thanks for responding!
DeleteThis whole process took place on my laptop. I saved the content to my laptop, went back to My Clippings, deleted the content, and saved.
Just now, I deleted My Clippings and then I highlighted a quote and a new My Clippings started. However, I still can't see the quote I highlighted (or place I bookmarked) when I'm looking on my Kindle. But when I connect my Kindle to my laptop and check the file, I can see my bookmark/ quote.
On kindle.amazon.com, my quotes are registering, but again, I still can't see it on my Kindle.
Thanks for your time! I shall keep trying to fix this bug and let you know how it turns out.
Anonymous,
DeleteThat's so odd. Maybe try the 'Restart' your Kindle. It's Menu / Settings/ Menu / Restart. (Avoid the reset to factory defaults.)
OR, you can just hold the power button for 21 seconds and then let go and go away for about 10 minutes while it cleans up any memory problems and then restarts.
Your My Clippings file, when you open it on the Kindle, is just a blank page?
Is your font size maybe very large? If so, reduce it to see if it helps.
That's all I can think of though. Let me know :-)
Hi -
ReplyDeleteAny idea why my "my clippings.txt" file doesn't show all my notes/highlights? I've got 55 visible on the kindle clippings page, but just 22 for a specific book in the txt file. This behavior is consistent across all my kindle books. Could it be that I am reading on both iPad and Kindle Paperwhite? Does my clippings.txt only contain clippings made on the specific device it lives on?
thanks!
Dan, yes, the 'myclippings.txt' file IS device-specific. The file is made on the device from books read there and you can copy the file to your pc/mac, if wanted, to edit or print from it or to combine it with other ones.
DeleteHOWEVER, ALL your annotations for any specific book(s) will show up when you access http://kindle.amazon.com and choose 'books' and at least in one place choose 'highlights' ... These are annotations and other info for the books you have on the Cloud.
But Amazon has hurt this feature in that you used to be able to easily sort your books by various categories and click on the book to get the annotations for that book.
Now everything is incredibly awkward and Highlights feature has only one clumsy sort (most recent) while it's hard to get to a book you want the highlights on.
On one book that I made a lot of highlights on, I see only two now.
I think they're trying to discourage active use of the annotations part of the website for whatever reasons, via the now ridiculous navigation to even get to a book to disply your own annotations. Sad to me.