One shortcoming of Stanza iPhone is that there is currently no good way to get books off of the device once they are on there. This is especially a problem when something goes wrong with the Apple update process when installing a new version of Stanza; if the update process goes awry, a user's entire library can get wiped out. This has been known to happen with especially large libraries.
Fortunately, as part of the normal iTunes backup process, all of Stanza's books will be backed up to the local computer. Unfortunately, the file names for the backed-up files are quite inscrutable: they are named unhelpful things like Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/f17b37724ccb765cd16c5521e/ff995362610610731.mddata, which makes it difficult to see which book goes where.
For a long time, we've been wanting to have 2-way book synchronization as part of Stanza Desktop. But we've simply not had time to implement it. So in the interim, we've written a very small and simple tool called the "Stanza Book Restore Tool", which will merely scan you iTunes backup folder(s) and try to identify which of those files are electronic books. When it finds those files, it copies them to a destination folder of your choosing
The tool itself is extremely simply. It requires Java which is installed by default on Mac OS X, but if your are on Windows, you may need to install it from java.com. Once you have Java installed, you can download http://static.lexcycle.com/stanza/stanzabookrestore.jar and double-click on the jar file to run it and restore your books.
Note that this tool is not well-tested on Windows, and you may need to navigate to your iTunes backup folder manually. If you have any problems, please report them on our user forums at https://www.lexcycle.com/forum/stanza. Also note that you must not have enabled the "Encrypt iPhone Backups" option in iTunes in order for this tool to be able to work. Finally, if the tool is not automatically able to guess the location of your iTunes backup folder, you will need to manually select it with the "Select..." button. The default location of your iPhone/iPod backup files is discussed at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766.
Enjoy!
Comments
Fantastic
Thanks for the great guidelines! Your post about Restoring Stanza books rocks !
THIS IS USELESS WITH VERY LARGE LIBRARYS
THIS IS USELESS WITH VERY LARGE LIBRARYS AS I HAVE TO RESYNC THEM ALL AGAIN. SO ONCE AGAIN I HAVE TO SPEND MY PRECIOUS TIME REBUILDING A LIBRARY I ALREADY BUILT. I HAVE TRIED THIS TOOL AND IT DOES NOT COPY ALL OF MY EBOOKS. STANZA NEEDS A SEPERATE BACK UP FUNCTION THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE RESTORING YOUR DEVICE. I DO NOT WHAT TO RESTORE A PERFECTLY WORKING DEVICE JUST BECAUSE THERE IS PROBLEMS WITHIN ONE APPLICATION. IT IS ABSOLUTLEY REDICULOUS. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT AN APP LIKE STANZA WOULD HAVE PROVIDED THESE IMPORTANT FACILITIES. I HAVE PURCHASED MANY EBOOKS AND HAVE LOST THEM TWICE BECAUSE OF PROBLEMS WITH STANZA AND HAVE HAD TO PURCHASE THEM AGAIN. I AM STUDYING TP BECOME A DOCTOR AND ALL MY MEDICAL EBOOKS ARE ON STANZA. I ALSO WORK FULLTIME AND HAVE CHILDREN, REBUILDING MY LIBRARY THAT I HAVE DONE ONCE ALREADY IS NOT PRACTICAL. I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME TO REBUILD. A BACKUP FUNCTION IS NEEDED WITHIN STANZA. MYSELF AND MANT OTHERS HAVE BEEN REQUESTING THIS FOR MONTHS NOW. I WANT A BACKUP SIMILAR TO ANOTHER APP CALLED AMBIANCE. IT IS A RELAXING MUSIC APP WHERE YOU DOWNLOAD WHAT SOUNDS YOU WANT. IT ALSO HAS A BACKUP FUNCTION THAT ALLOWS YOU TO BACKUP YOUR DATA TO YOUR COMPUTER INCASE OF ANY PROBLEMS. IF YOU THEN NEED TO RESTORE FROM A BACKUP YOU OPEN UP THE AMBIANCE APP AND GO TO THE WEB PAGE THAT AMBIANCE PROVIDES AND IT ASKS YOU TO LOCATE THE BACKUP FILE YOU SAVED TO YOUR COMPUTER AND IT THEN REINSTALLS ALL THE DATA FOR YOU. THIS FUNCTION WOULD BE IDEAL FOR STANZA AS EBOOKS ARE DATA LIKE ANY OTHER AND CUSTOMERS NEED TO BE ABLE TO BACKUP AND RESTORE THIS DATA EASILY IF NEEDED. IF ANYONE FEELS THE SAME AS I DO PLEASE COMMENT. WE NEED TO MAKE STANZA AWARE OF THIS AND KEEP THIS REQUEST ACTIVE. THANK YOU
good idea
thanks..
BACKUP ALL EBOOKS AT ONCE WITHOUT HAVING TO RESTORE IPOD TOUCH
I WANT A BACKUP FUNCTION THAT YOU CAN RESTORE YOUR BOOKS FROM A BACKUP WITHIN STANZA WITHOUT HAVING TO RESTORE YOUR IPOD TOUCH/IPHONE. EVERYONE KNOWS RESTORING FROM A BACKUP CAUSE MANY PROBLEMS AND IN THE END YOU HAVE TO YOUR DEVICE UP AS NEW. I HAVE OVER 390 EBOOKS AND I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME TO RESTORE THEM ALL ONE BY ONE. STANZA HAS MADE A JAVA SCRIPT BUT THIS IS TO NO USE FOR MYSELF AS I AM A WORKING MOTHER WHO DOES NOT HAVE TIME TO ADD MY 390 EBOOKS ONE BY ONE. THIS IS A FUNCTION THAT I AND MANY OTHERS WANT NOT NEED. I HAVE ENCOUNTERED MANY PROBLEMS WITH UPDATING STANZA AND HAVE LOST MY EBOOKS TWICE NOW. I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF STANZA WOULD REALISE THAT ONE CAN ENCOUNTER PROBLEMS WITH UPDATING STANZA AND ONES DEVICE. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT DEVELOPERS WOULD HAVE REALISED THAT SOME CUSTOMERS HAVE MANY HUNDREDS OF EBOOKS THAT THEY HAVE PURCHASED AND IF A PROBLEMS OCCUR WITH STANZA OR ONES DEVICE FOR EXAMPLE THAT THEY HAD A SOLUTION. PLEASE CAN OTHERS SPEAK OUT ABOUT THIS. I WANT A BACKUP FUNCTION THAT I CAN RESTORE ALL MY EBOOKS FROM WITHIN STANZA AT ONE TIME WITHOUT RESTORING MY IPOD TOUCH/IPHONE. PLEASE STANZA MAKE THIS REQUEST AVAILABLE. THIS WOULD BE A PERFECT APPLICATION IF IT HAD THIS FEATURE. THANK YOU
comment thread on forum
Added a thread http://www.lexcycle.com/node/1864 for comments, feel free to add to that thread.
file wouldn't install
I downloaded the .jar file, but when I tried to run it, I got an error message that said, "The Jave JAR file "stanzabookrestor.jar could not be launched. Check the console for possible error messages."
I did check the console, but I don't know how to read the info there.
How do I fix this?
Scott
Having the same problem.
Having the same problem. The .jar file won't launch. Here is the console output:
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] Exception in thread "main"
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:676)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:56)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:317)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:280)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:252)
2/21/10 1:52:48 PM [0x0-0x712712].com.apple.JarLauncher[15082] at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:375)
hi there
hello there
I posted your blog to my facebook group
Regards
SEO expertiese