# something strange from goodreads



## tinkerdan (May 16, 2019)

My most recent login to my goodreads account shows that all my bookshelves and all my reviews have vanished.
Has anyone had this happen?
I'm waiting for goodreads to respond to my query on the matter.

It appears that this has removed all of my reviews also.

So anyone whose books I've reviewed on goodreads---it will appear as though I have taken my review away.
I might be able to restore some of these myself; however I need to find out if goodreads knows what might have happened.
My profile is still there--just all my shelves and reviews are gone.


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## tinkerdan (May 17, 2019)

Since they have not responded--I'm assuming that means it is up to me to restore them through the backups I have been keeping up with with their export utility

I have managed to get my reviews all back online there--the rest can wait

I'm going to be more diligent about the bakups


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## Vertigo (May 17, 2019)

Sorry I didn't see this yesterday. You may have acted too quickly. This sort of thing has happened before and they have generally restored matters within a few days. I remember it happening several months ago when all my reviews and read dates disappeared. On querying they said they were working on it and everything was fairly quickly back to normal.

I confess I'm not too worried by this sort of thing as I only really do my reviews for me and I keep them in my own local (and well backed up) database which I simply copy to GR (and here).


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## pambaddeley (May 17, 2019)

Scary. Thanks for the reminder - hadn't exported mine for a month or so.


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## Jo Zebedee (May 17, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> Sorry I didn't see this yesterday. You may have acted too quickly. This sort of thing has happened before and they have generally restored matters within a few days. I remember it happening several months ago when all my reviews and read dates disappeared. On querying they said they were working on it and everything was fairly quickly back to normal.
> 
> I confess I'm not too worried by this sort of thing as I only really do my reviews for me and I keep them in my own local (and well backed up) database which I simply copy to GR (and here).


Not anymore. I’ve lost several GR reviews this year


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## M. Robert Gibson (May 17, 2019)

Ooh.  I didn't know about the export feature.  Glad I stopped by.

Thanks folks


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## Brian G Turner (May 17, 2019)

tinkerdan said:


> restore them through the backups I have been keeping up with with their export utility



Oh? Where do we find this?


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## M. Robert Gibson (May 17, 2019)

> Click on My Books
> Left hand navigation menu, under Tools at the bottom
> Import and Export

The wonderful world of importing and exporting is now yours to explore 

Edit

This link should take you there, assuming you are logged in








						Goodreads
					





					www.goodreads.com


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## tinkerdan (May 17, 2019)

Backup-backup-and backup!
I have learnt me lesson.

Since I did by hand; I renamed bookshelves differently so if they bring back then I'll have strange duplicates across the shelves. Not sure what that will do with the reviews.


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## elvet (May 17, 2019)

M. Robert Gibson said:


> > Click on My Books
> > Left hand navigation menu, under Tools at the bottom
> > Import and Export
> 
> ...


Thank you for that. 
It gives you a page with a whole bunch of teeny writing on a chart. I found I could save it to the Numbers App on my iPad. It ended up being a spreadsheet.


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## tinkerdan (May 21, 2019)

Finally got a response today and they are _*Sorry.*_

Any way they did give me a link to show I have a whole bunch of reviews in bookshelves. (The ones I manually restored.)

They wanted examples of the ones I am missing so they could go around looking for them????? I guess.

Anyway: I wrote them back that it's a good thing they aren't ISO9000 or this type of bug could be a really bad thing for the certification.

I have a feeling that this happens a lot...so be sure to do those exports.  
The export utility collects text information regarding your bookshelves and exports in csv file that can be viewed as a spreadsheet in MS Excel--it doesn't take up much room and it's easy to do. Takes a couple minutes.

Unfortunately since I didn't have a current one and can't remember where I put the last one I did--which would  be next to useless anyway since it would be mostly bookshelves that have stars and no reviews--I can't say how good the restore or import function might be.

This is one reason why I don't trust any cloud storage--if they fold up tents, you lose your data; if they have server problems, you lose your data; if they don't like you, you lose your data; if they have a bug, they lose your data. However eventually they might finally message you with--Sorry. 

At least goodreads is not a paid service.


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## Vertigo (May 21, 2019)

tinkerdan said:


> This is one reason why I don't trust any cloud storage--if they fold up tents, you lose your data; if they have server problems, you lose your data; if they don't like you, you lose your data; if they have a bug, they lose your data. However eventually they might finally message you with--Sorry.


Agree one hundred percent; I personally think that entrusting your backup data to anyone but yourself is bonkers. This includes relying on getting copies of your ebooks from the vendor after you've lost them. Back up everything and store it yourself. Your data is far too valuable to entrust to anyone else. My nephew lost his mobile and lost all, and I do mean ALL, of his photos of their first baby. He had to beg copies off friends and family.


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## M. Robert Gibson (May 21, 2019)

tinkerdan said:


> This is one reason why I don't trust any cloud storage


I always bang on about "The Cloud" is simply 'someone else's computer'.  Would you store your personal information (photos, banking information etc) on someone else's computer?
Not me. No way. No siree, bob.


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