Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Google books error "Couldn't retrieve part of the book from server. Try again later."

If you are using this to troubleshoot your Google Books issue, proceed at your own risk. I'm not responsible to any damages. This is what worked for me.

This morning I tried to buy a book on my Android phone and after the purchase I tried to open the book. Shortly after I got an error saying:

"Couldn't retrieve part of book from server. Try again later."

How annoying right? So I tried again later. Same error. So I started poking around. Maybe I can download a sample of a random book... nope same error. Well I felt a little bit better knowing it wouldn't download a sample and my purchased book.

That leads to an issue with either Google, my phone, my connection on my phone, or the Google Books app. I then opened http://books.google.com/ and found my book that I purchased and I was able to open it and read it. So that leaves my phone, my connection on my phone, or the Google Books app. Then I verified I could browse the Internet on my phone and I could. Also tried wifi on and off. Still the same error. Well, I then started with the Google Books app. I "force stop" the app, "clear data", then tried to open the app. That was a complete fail and all my offline books where gone, as I expected from clearing the data.

The last thing to do was to "uninstall updates". Uninstall updates was located where the uninstall button should be. I think my Google books version was 2.x.x ( I think 2.3.5 but not sure ). So I uninstalled updates. The version of Google Books is now 1.3.5 and that did the trick. I was able to view all my books, purchased and sampled, and re-download all my books offline including the new book I just purchased. Hope this helps someone...