Techies anyway to get a big web page table extracted into a data file?

Factual Questions
1

My mom’s been after me to write her a book listing report from her Manage My Kindle page on Amazon. It is so primitive and clunky. My mom reads 5 books a week. She’s already got 396 in her Kindle Archive. Once in awhile she wants to reread a book from maybe 10 months ago. It’s an author she’s only read once and doesn’t remember the name. It is so tedious paging through that list of books under Manage My Kindle. I the html table only lists 15 books per page. That sucks. sigh…

What I want to do is write a Crystal Report like I create at work. Use the Group heading feature. Then a subgroup total and a Grand total.

Kindle Book list by Author and Title Date: xx/xx/xx

Steven King
Oh crap Steven Kings book
Really? Another Steven King book
whatever another book is
Yet another Steven King book
Total 4

Tom Clancy
Red October
Someother Clancy book
Total 2

**44 Authors reported, 396 books total.
**
Print it off and she can keep it by her nightstand. I’ll have to update it every couple months. Really a extremely simple report once I get the data into Access. Another day at the office, except this report is for a family member.

The trick is getting the data extracted from Amazon’s Manage My Kindle Page. I can select the rows, copy and paste into Excel. That’s going to be so tedious with only 15 books per page being listed. I estimate 26 page accesses, copying and pasting. That’s going to suck.

Once it’s in Excel I can delete the junk columns (the plus sign column and The Actions button) and then import the spreadsheet into Access. Updates would only require copy/pasting the books she buys every couple months and merging those into Access to keep it current. Run the Crystal Report, print. Done.

**Any ideas on how to automate the extraction from Amazon’s Manage My Kindle Page. Anyone feel like writing a script or something?
**

2

Well, I decided to just gut it out and copy/paste. Mouse selecting is too unreliable. I’ve found clicking row 1, column 1 and then using Shift down arrow gets all the rows/columns

Amazon helpfully lists this at the top of each page.
Showing 76 - 90 of 396 items

which corresponds to my spreadsheet rows. I can tell if I screw up and jump over a page or something.

Compared with getting my toenails ripped out with pliers this really isn’t that bad. :smiley:

Once I get the data. It won’t take an hour to define the database in Access. It’s only three columns. Piece of cake.

3

I’ll pass along this trick just in case anyone else wants a master list of their kindle books.

Once you get that table of 15 books selected, ctrl-c (to copy), ctrl-v (paste) in Excel. Carefully click next page. Your table will still be selected. ctrl-c, ctrl-v. If you don’t click in the wrong place you won’t lose your selected table. A big time saver.

4

Log into your Amazon account, and go to Your Account.

Down the bottom, under Digital Content, click on Your Collection.

Towards the top right there’s a Print button that’ll print the entire list in one go. You can sort by author first.

5

I’d never noticed the “Your Collection” feature on Amazon. Hidden deep inside Your Account. After all these years I learned a new trick on Amazon. :wink: I really like those view options too. Thin List is great for printing. View covers gives thumbnails of your books. nice

Thats so much easier than that frustrating 15 book list under Manage Your Kindle.

Thank you.