JW Library restore fails on Windows due to playlist files

[PantherDave]

Hi friends!

 

My primary JW Library device is my Android phone, and I have many notes, highlights and playlists since going way back. I remember years back I would be able to do a backup then restore onto Windows and vice versa. Sometimes I just prefer to study on a device with a larger screen, proper keyboard, etc. Well, at some point my data restore on Windows stopped working. I simply get the error: "Restore Failed. There is something wrong with the backup file." I have no problems with this on any Android devices, and this issue has now persisted across various PCs on Windows 10 and 11. Seems like a system compatibility issue.

 

In my troubleshooting, I discovered .jwlibrary is a .zip file in disguise. The most interesting file inside the backup is userData.db, which is a SQLite3 database. It's pretty fascinating to browse! As you'd expect, the brothers sure did put a lot of thought into organizing our data, even including timestamps on our notes.

 

Anyways, I noticed a picture file from a playlist that contained characters Windows could not extract. So I deleted the image from my phone's playlist, performed a backup again, and ...ran into the same error. I went further and temporarily deleted ALL of my playlists, did a new backup and was able to restore on Windows this time!

 

So now I know I can narrow it down to find the offending file via trial-and-error. I hope this helps someone who's stuck in the same situation. I'll reply back if I learn anything else important. If anybody knows of a log file I'm missing or anything else that might help, that would be appreciated. But I know I'm on the right track, and I have a partial solution anyways.

 

 

[Eryk]

@PantherDave

 

Try JWLManager. You can load your backup and simply re-save under a different name. That may fix some db errors. If not, you can delete images from your playlists (individually or the whole list at once) to try to narrow it down. I hope that helps ;-)

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I used a '3rd party's syncing process that combined (synced) all the notes files across my 3 devices.

It also could not handle playlists. Fortunately, I picked this up during my 'personal testing' time.

Hence, I always have an 'export' of all my playlists in a seperate folder. In this way, I keep a seperate backup of them all. 

It sounds like you did some extensive exploring.

I am sure one day, there will be a 'syncing' step. And one day there will be a way to transfer the library to a new device, and keep all the download items as well.

In the meantime, I enjoy watching the growth.