Moving personal books to a new computer without rebuilding them

Is there a way to move personal books to a new computer without rebuilding them? Rebuilding hundreds of personal books is a tedious task. I wonder if the file could be copied to the new computer? I sure wish Logos could sync personal books across devices.

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Bill Shewmaker

Harry, if I remember correctly (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't) you can upload the PB to the cloud and then as long as the original document is on the computer (new or otherwise) it should be available. I've not tried this, however, and others may say differently.

Bill

JT (alabama24)

I sure wish Logos could sync personal books across devices.

They do... if you manually upload them.

Is there a way to move personal books to a new computer without rebuilding them?

Yes. You will copy the compiled files and use the "scan" method. I'll see if I can find a wiki link.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035286#Comment_1035286

From the WIKI:

Alternatively, you can tranfer PB’s via the command scan <path>, where <path> is the location of a folder containing the PB resource files e.g. on a USB drive. This is also a way to restore PB files that were not uploaded.

David Ames

Rebuilding hundreds of personal books is a tedious task.

The tediousness of rebuilding does check to see if you still have all of the source files on the new computer.

I have all of mine in a directory / folder called 'PBBsource'

[[the LBSPBB files are stored at C:\Users\User1\AppData\Local\Logos\Data\admhbkzb.2ys\ResourceManager\Resources]]

Where User1 is where your documents are stored [most likely your name]

Logos maybe Logos4

and 'admhbkzb.2ys' is some random characters used as a folder name

Copy all the 'lbspbb' files from off the old computer to some convenient place of the new one and SCAN as above

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035287#Comment_1035287

From the WIKI:

Alternatively, you can tranfer PB’s via the command scan <path>, where <path> is the location of a folder containing the PB resource files e.g. on a USB drive. This is also a way to restore PB files that were not uploaded.

Does the scan command make a copy of the files in the scanned folder or does it make a copy of them in the Logos folder? Your suggestion that they be on a USB drive implies that Logos copies them to its own folder.

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035286#Comment_1035286

I sure wish Logos could sync personal books across devices.

They do... if you manually upload them.

Is there a way to batch upload a group of personal books that have been built or must be they be uploaded one at a time from the book information for each individual book in the Personal Books tool?

David Ames

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035425#Comment_1035425

Does the scan command make a copy of the files in the scanned folder or does it make a copy of them in the Logos folder? Your suggestion that they be on a USB drive implies that Logos copies them to its own folder.

You copy the LBSPBB files to the flash drive and then scan the flash drive and the files show up in your Logos library

the old computer needs to be up and running to transfer the LBSPBB files [The files will look like a long string of letters ending in .lbspbb

Have fun and "JT (alabama24)" should confirm this shortly

Kolen Cheung

Is there a way to move personal books to a new computer without rebuilding them? Rebuilding hundreds of personal books is a tedious task. I wonder if the file could be copied to the new computer? I sure wish Logos could sync personal books across devices.

This part of the wiki explain couple ways of dealing with this: https://wiki.logos.com/personal_books#Uploading_and_Deleting_books

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035428#Comment_1035428

Is there a way to batch upload a group of personal books that have been built or must be they be uploaded one at a time from the book information for each individual book in the Personal Books tool?

There is no way to batch Upload; you have to do it for each book in the Personal Books tool.

The Scan method is the best way for you. Copy the whole Resources folder (with PB's) to a folder on a mobile device, then scan that device from Logos on your destination computer. Scan reads the folder on the device and transfers any new or updated files (including PB files) to the Resources folder, followed by indexing. So you don't have to copy only the PB files to the device.

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035514#Comment_1035514

The Scan method is the best way for you. Copy the whole Resources folder (with PB's) to a folder on a mobile device, then scan that device from Logos on your destination computer. Scan reads the folder on the device and transfers any new or updated files (including PB files) to the Resources folder, followed by indexing. So you don't have to copy only the PB files to the device.

Dave - This is good, time saving advice for moving from one computer to another.

However, if a person has more than one computer, they would need to remember to do the upload after building a personal book. I wonder why the Upload command is even necessary. Why not just upload one's personal books by default so the most up to date version is available on all computers?

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035528#Comment_1035528

If you read the link to the wiki above, may be the reason is

However, the only way to remove uploaded books is to Hide them.

I remember from the old days if one upload a PBB, and revise and upload again, then there are 2 uploaded copies. I don’t know if this matter is resolved or not. But because of that I’ve never upload it, and if fact always recompile (I can see it could be a problem if one has a ton of PBB.)

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035528#Comment_1035528

However, if a person has more than one computer, they would need to remember to do the upload after building a personal book. I wonder why the Upload command is even necessary.

The original idea was to have a library of Personal Books in the Cloud, but Faithlife thought the risk of distributing copyright material was too great. So Upload became a convenient way to transfer PB's to your other installations.

Why not just upload one's personal books by default so the most up to date version is available on all computers?

Not everybody is happy to expose their intellectual property to the Cloud. Which is why people were unhappy when their Sermon documents were automatically uploaded at one time.Also, PB's cannot be deleted from the Cloud, and they have to be hidden to remove them from your computers.

David Ames

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035551#Comment_1035551

Not everybody is happy to expose their intellectual property to the Cloud. Which is why people were unhappy when their Sermon documents were automatically uploaded at one time.Also, PB's cannot be deleted from the Cloud, and they have to be hidden to remove them from your computers.

And to add to Dave Hooton's remarks, some of us do not use 'upload' as many of our PBB files fall under our interpretation of 'fair use'. We can use them, under fair use, but we can not share them and we lose control of who sees them after we hit 'upload'. So we rebuild them on each machine.

[[Anybody know what that does to the megadata? multi builds of the same PBB on different machines]]

[[Also what happens to the Megadata when we overwrite a PPB with a different one as in rename to Dummy010, change docx file to Dummy and rebuild. Then when I build a new PBB I overwrite one of the Dummy ones. (that is how I delete a PBB, have no clue what it does to Megadata - wish I knew) ]]

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035551#Comment_1035551

The original idea was to have a library of Personal Books in the Cloud, but Faithlife thought the risk of distributing copyright material was too great.

I also remember that. But is it really a risk issue rather than cost of maintaining it, i.e. a way for DMCA takedown, and staffs who response to that, and all this for free?

Not everybody is happy to expose their intellectual property to the Cloud.

I think this is partly due to misunderstanding on what’s “the cloud”, and partly is about whom it is visible to.

Also, PB’s cannot be deleted from the Cloud, and they have to be hidden to remove them from your computers.

This is one big problem, as any PBB is bounded to be updated at some point (even official Logos book will be updated.) Why after all these years this (deleting PBB, old versions) is not implemented?

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035528#Comment_1035528

I wonder why the Upload command is even necessary. Why not just upload one's personal books by default so the most up to date version is available on all computers?

there is a real cost to FL associated with hosting your personal books, and FL provides this free of cost. It isn’t in their best interest to have all personal books Willy Nilly upload... especially when 1) not all want this and 2) there could be liability issues for FL.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035559#Comment_1035559

some of us do not use ‘upload’ as many of our PBB files fall under our interpretation of ‘fair use’

I wonder what kind of “interpretation” of fair use are there? Also, does “many of our” speaks for the majority of Logos users?

I once made a mistake in preparing a PBB and shared it in Logos forum almost a decade ago: it is a resource generally available online for free, but is still copyrighted. It can be made available for free is (probably) because the website owner either seek authorization from the copyright owner or violating copyright in doing so (unlikely because those are reputable websites and has been online for years without a DMCA takedown.) But since I don’t have the consent of the copyright owner, I cannot distribute it on Logos forum. And for that I need help from a staff to remove it. So this is part of the cost of hosting PBB (where staff works for free for our mess.)

Since then I still kept that resource for personal use only, because I obtain it legitimately, but have no right to redistribute.

Other example would be some resource I bought from other Bible softwares, eBook vendors, etc. that I want to convert them and use them in Logos.

But note that any examples I used here isn’t related to “fair use” at all, because I haven’t share it. Uploading it isn’t a form of sharing because in principle you are the only one to whom it is visible to. (The possibility that the staff can see it when, e.g., debugging, isn’t an issue.)

Harry Hahne

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035551#Comment_1035551

Not everybody is happy to expose their intellectual property to the Cloud. Which is why people were unhappy when their Sermon documents were automatically uploaded at one time

Fair enough. But there at least there should be a batch upload option -- select a bunch of Personal Books and hit Upload.

Also, PB's cannot be deleted from the Cloud

That is a surprising programming omission on Faithlife's part. Every other cloud storage has the option to delete documents.

Personal documents can be deleted from https://documents.logos.com/. Why not just add the Personal Books there so the uploaded books can deleted as well?

they have to be hidden to remove them from your computers.

I notice that in the book Information for my personal books, there is now an option to Remove From Device. But if I select Remove from Device, the PB still shows up in my Library. So I see that the only way to get rid of a PB is to hide it. I ran into this behavior in an older version of Logos, but I had hoped they would provide the option of removing a PB by now.

Perhaps if Faithlife does not want to implement management of personal books on the cloud, they could add the functionality to PBB. They could have the options Remove From This Device and Remove From all Devices (which would delete it from the Cloud). I have assumed if I delete a book from PBB, it would be deleted from the computer, but that is clearly not so.

Dave Hooton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1035652#Comment_1035652

But there at least there should be a batch upload option -- select a bunch of Personal Books and hit Upload.

From Faithlife's perspective, you already have the ability to Upload (with some limitation on size), and you can distribute them to your other computers in a batch transfer via the Scan command (without FL having to host them).

Perhaps if Faithlife does not want to implement management of personal books on the cloud, they could add the functionality to PBB. They could have the options Remove From This Device and Remove From all Devices (which would delete it from the Cloud).

If they did not wish to manage PB's, Faithlife could delete all PB's in the cloud!

The best solution is for Delete to function the way you thought it should, and also remove PB's in the Cloud.

EDIT: Selective downloading of resources (being tested in v8.3) could throw a different for light on this, because the ability to select PB's becomes important for a limited installation. And the only PB's available for selection will be the ones that have been Uploaded! So this means using the PB tool to compile and Upload PB's that are not listed. Faithlife are aware of this, but will they make the job any easier?