My library is completely missing from Adobe Digital Editions

Report · Mar 24, 2013

I opened ADE today only to find that the shelves I made are suddenly missing ---- my whole library is empty. Everything that I had in ADE is gone. The Digital Editions folder still exists in My Documents, but nothing is on ADE.

Why did this happen and how can I get my library and shelves back?

Thanks for your help.

Darlene

Report · Mar 25, 2013

The Digital Editions folder still exists in My Documents, Does it still have the various books in it, as .epub files?

What happens if you try to open one of the books in ADE? (ctrl-O and navigate to book, or drag-drop book from Explorer onto ADE)

You should havea file 'C:\Users\<username>\Documents\My Digital Editions\manifest.xml'

which contains information about books and shelves. Is that there?

Report · Mar 25, 2013

Hello,

Yeah, the manifest.xml file is still there.

I can open books in ADE and I can add them like usual - but it is like

I've just started it from scratch.

Report · Mar 26, 2013

How big is manifest.xml?

It should be (very approximately) 20 lines plus 20 lines per book.

If it is very short, ADE must have corrupted it somehow, and I am afraid you library organization is probably lost unless you have a backup.

If it is quite long, then either ADE is ignoring it for some reason, or it slightly corrupted and might be recoverable.

Report · Mar 26, 2013

13 lines of code - 4 KB

I save all my ePubs and PDFs on the computer first, so my books aren't

lost that way, just the organization of them I guess.

Report · May 02, 2017

I just ran into the same problem but with the prior response was able to recover.

I offer this for any others who might come this way.

I downloaded an epub (to be opened in Digital Editions); When it did not open DE, I tried to open it (from my download list); at that point it appeared in DE (but none of my other books were there [50+ books]). Furthermore when I tried to close DE, it refused to let me close saying that the book had not been copied to my library; trying to copy to my (apparently non-existent) library had no effect. It was starting to appear that the only way out was to completely shut down my entire computer system!

However, I found this forum post and went in search of My Digital Editions folder; I had a manifest folder but no manifest .xml file.

Nothing here indicated how to re-create this file. In desperation I clicked on one of the epub files and then watched in amazement as the hung version of DE closed, then re-opened with the epub I had selected. Existing DE (no problem), I check again and the manifest.xml had been recreated. No further problems from that point on!