Special Pages - Reports

Friday, January 28, 2011

Q&A from today: How to find past appearances of a character in a book - Update

FROM THE KINDLE FORUMS, A QUESTION TODAY

Saw the following question on an Amazon Kindle forum today and thought it might be good to post the Q&A here as well.  There are also good answers to new customers' questions on a number of common puzzlements in that thread.

Q: I have a kindle but I was wondering if there was a quicker way to go to the beginning of a book you are reading to review names from the previous pages.  I have been using the back button but it takes a long time to find what you want to know.  With a book you can just turn the pages.  This happens frequently when you may not get back to what you are reading for days...

A:  [There were several good answers at the forum.  The one below was mine (slightly modified for the blog), but you might enjoy reading the other ones on that page too, and you can click on the forum link to see them.]

Update - The answer is for a Kindle 3 as there were several million new owners of these in the last few months.  The steps for Kindle-2 and DX are on an earlier, separate page.  End of Update

  Here are the steps:

1. RIGHT on the page you're reading -
  Start typing the the name of the character
    whose previous appearances you
    want to see again.
  The searchbox will come up with your
    typed name in it.
  You then cursor down one step and then
  cursor right one step to get "find"
    as an option.
  Click on that and wait for the usually
    several results,
    each surrounded by context and with
    a link to the page that holds it.

2. If it's a complex name to type, then
  Start a highlight on it instead.
  Click on the 5-way button at the
    beginning of the name, word or phrase
    to start a highlight, and then
  go to the right with the 5-way button until
    you get the last letter of the name,
    but -don't- click the 5-way button as
    you might for an actual highlight.

  Instead, press the spacebar to end it, and
    that'll put the name into the
    search box for you, and you can
  go down one step and
  go to the right one step
  to get the 'find' option.

  As CLS10, Bufo Calvin and others show, there are many different ways...

Getting back to the beginning of a book
As for how to get back to the beginning of a book, one can just -- as was pointed out in the forum thread -- press the Menu button and the default option will be "Go to..."

  Click on that and you'll get the "Go to" box where you can cursor down one step and then cursor left to choose either "beginning" or even "cover."

  Any tips you may have are always welcome in the Comments area.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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