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Some export files, mine included, SOMETIMES leave out the contents of the Date Read column for some � but not all � of my books. This seems to be a sporadic problem; some of my export files have all the read dates, but others don’t.

Also, the amount of missing info seems to vary. For me, a recent export file was missing the read dates for all books I read in 2022 and 2023 (about 175 books). A poster in another recent thread reported that read dates from 2017 to 2023 (some 800 books) were missing from their export file.

It seems that GR developers have known about this problem for several years. GR Help had two questions/reports about this in 2019 (, and ), plus , and (just a few days ago). GR does not appear to have a fix or work-around for this problem.

Have you noticed missing read dates in your export files? Any ideas for dealing with this problem?

Answering myself to say that I have one theory: Perhaps data is dropped if the server is under stress (too busy).

So my only idea is to check each export file for missing read dates, then do another export with my fingers crossed. Then check that file. And try again. And so on.

Another theory: A poster in a different group mentioned that this problem might happen if "Currently Reading" is not selected before a read date was set. (See this post for details.)

This hasn’t been my experience � I almost never select “Currently Reading" � but my read dates appear in my export files. Except when they sometimes don't.

I said in the other thread, that I have no books missing Read dates. I was wrong, see below.

First, I sorted my Export File by Date Read. Then I filtered for just the Read shelf. The bottom entries for this filtered group have no Date Read.

There is an error in my file. It *is* showing books Read without a Date Read, but I haven't read them. There is a bug on my shelves where I turned a non-exclusive Wish List shelf to an Exclusive shelf. Some of the books on my shelves are noted with two Exclusive shelves, including Read. Thanks to this thread, I can now work on fixing those.

I also have books that I *have* read without read dates. Ugh. Double Ugh. As I cannot sort my shelves to isolate these, I will have to address them one at a time. I have 2 exports to compare and they *appear* to be the same titles. I hope that is the case and that the missing dates are not random.

I believe all of these books have a Date Added that is before what the Date Read should be. I cannot recall ever having not added a book to Currently Reading before marking Read, except for a few books that I had read before joining GR in February 2009.

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "Another theory: A poster in a different group mentioned that this problem might happen if "Currently Reading" is not selected before a read date was set."

In my personal experience I can't see that making much of a difference. I was the one with over 800 dates missing, lol, although some did have dates going back to when I first joined GR in 2011. It was just that the majority of them (probably around 700 or so) were between 2017-2023.

Now, why I'm stating I'm doubting the "dates weren't added because you didn't use currently reading" statement is because I rarely use it. With the 3590 books I've read since 2011 (well at least the ones I've marked on GR, lol) I have probably only used 'currently reading' maybe 50 or so times. I usually can't be bothered hitting that as my choice of reading style usually goes to shorter books that I typically read over 2 or 3 days at most.

So if that statement were to be correct, I would have been missing a lot more book read dates than I did...

The read dates I was truly missing were late 2018/early 2019. I looked at your links, Mes. No excuse for their not fixing this in 4 years.

Yes, there certainly has been enough time � and enough reports � for the GR developers to fix the problem. But I don't think it's a priority for them. Actually, it's helpful to know that, so I don't waste my time wishing for bug fixes from GR.

I spent a few hours today, looking more closely at my latest export file, and the read-date problem is MUCH worse than I thought. In today’s file, only a few of my 2023 and 2022 dates were missing (only 23 out of 168). But it looks like over 400 read dates are missing, across the 15 years (and 1,128 books) for which I have been consistently entering read dates. I can't spot any pattern to the missing dates, other than noticing that it's a significant error rate.

I should probably do more research � if I can find the time to do it � but I’m not really sure it’s worth it. I think I need a better way to capture my read dates and other data that I care about.

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "I think I need a better way to capture my read dates and other data that I care about."

Agreed. I think just finding what I need for my own use is a better way to spend my time. I will be exporting often, and checking those titles to which I've made changes.