My Kindle won't "index" my books

April 6, 2022 1:39 PM

I have a Kindle Paperwhite 4. One of the nice things about it is how it can search for text in one book or in every book on the device. But before it can do that, the Kindle has to "index" each book, and mine seems to have stopped doing that. It is working fine in every other respect.

Searching for an answer to this has gotten me no useful info. Lots of comments about how indexing can drain the device's battery, or it can take a while if you add a bunch of books at a time, but nothing about how to make indexing happen. It seems to have stopped indexing completely some time after one of the latest software updates.

Any guidance from Kindle users is welcome.

posted by Flexagon to Technology (1 answer total)

There were two ways to force indexing I found waaay back in the day on an earlier model of Kindle. No idea if they'll work on the Paperwhite.

1. Rebooting the kindle, then leaving it alone for a while seemed to kickstart indexing.

2. Search for a random string in the search screen. A list of unindexed books would show up in the results on that model, and going to the first book in the list would kickstart indexing, after which I'd leave it plugged in overnight with the wifi turned on.

I own an Oasis now, which doesn't seem to respond to either of those two, so the Paperwhite might not, either, but they're worth a try.
posted by telophase at 2:39 PM on April 6, 2022 [1 favorite]