My Samsung Note 8.0 GT-N5100 is stuck in a boot loop. I want to retrieve data ... is there any hope? I am about to press "wipe data/factory reset" on the recovery menu, but have found this place and you are my last best hope! 

I hope to rescue data from S-note and other apps, plus loads of photos and videos (although these are mainly backed up on google+)

I am not an expert but can and will follow difficult instructions if you explain them slowly!

Thank you for your time.
I tried various suggestions to get past the bootloop but could not even get into safe mode. All I had to work with were the options on the recovery menu. Clearing the cache partition seemed to make no difference, so I eventually gave up and selected wipe data/factory reset.

This also seemed top have no effect. However, the device unexpectedly closed itself down and when I restarted it, there were signs of life and it booted up again for the first time for weeks!

I went through the start-up procedures carefully and selected "restore" for any google/ Samsung data and applications, even though it said I had not backed any up ... and it seems that all my data has not been lost after all! I already knew that my pics and vids were on google+ so was not too disappointed to find quite an empty gallery, but was delighted to find ALL my S-note docs were restored, and a number of my apps.

Some - quite a few - are missing - all my kindle ebooks for example, but I will see if these are transferrable, and there are apps I can find again if I need them. 

I would recommend anyone with a Samsung device to have a Samsung account and enable "back-up" - also to save as much data as poss onto the micro sim card. 

Thanks to Izzy and everyone for helping me through this traumatic afternoon!