How to delete "empty" folders?

[Snauzoo]

What do you do when you discover that a folder contains only a opf and a jpg and that the epub itself is missing? The books show up in Calibre so I can delete them as I encounter them, but I would really like to get rid of these useless folders. I have a way to discover them (using RED) but I have read so many times that we should not even venture into that library folder with a mouse. I can look for them, and then use Calibre to remove them, but is there a way that Calibre itself can find them? With a lot of errors happening to me, this seems to be one of the contributing factors.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Snauzoo

What do you do when you discover that a folder contains only a opf and a jpg and that the epub itself is missing? The books show up in Calibre so I can delete them as I encounter them, but I would really like to get rid of these useless folders. I have a way to discover them (using RED) but I have read so many times that we should not even venture into that library folder with a mouse. I can look for them, and then use Calibre to remove them, but is there a way that Calibre itself can find them? With a lot of errors happening to me, this seems to be one of the contributing factors.

Those are called "empty books" that you can create as 'place holders'.

If you really want to delete these in the Search: formats:false
Then Select all (found), Delete key/Recycle button...

I had the same problem. I found a slight syntax problem in the recommended cure:

Recommended - Search: formats:false {note: "formats"]

Did NOT work as I wished, showing me one entry out of two thousand plus known problem folders.

Search: format:false

Did work, showing me 2033 problem folders which I deleted.

I have no idea what was unique about the first try.

NOTE: In case some one else gets into the same mess I did, here's what happened to me and what I did.

I was ADDING large groups of documents to the new Calibre library. One group turned out to be an old backup, duplicating about 2000 documents with slightly different names since there was a change in our standard naming format some time back. I made a copy of the entire Calibre folder to experiment on then used a free util called FindAllDuplicates which calculates a unique "check sum" for each document then compares all documents, 11,544 in this case. The utility permits you to auto delete either the first or last item in each pair/group. This deleted my duplicate documents in the folder but left them in the Calibre database.

I used the procedure recommended in this thread to purge them from the database.

Thanks to all the "helpers"!

[Snauzoo]

What led me to discovering this discrepancy is that a.) I have no other format than ePub. and b.) the library icon at the top showed one number, and the format category in the tag browser showed 4 less. Clicking once again on the format category to change to a minus sign (meaning false) revealed the four books. They indeed had covers, and they had opf files but the epub was gone. Only one was something I cared to have, so it was no big loss. As I have been pruning madly I have found others also. But they got deleted as I went along to add covers etc. So I guess four is no big deal after all.

[chaley]

Check Library (library, library maintenance, check library) will report folders that are really orphans (are not attached to a book), along with several other unusual conditions.

[Snauzoo]

Originally Posted by chaley

Check Library (library, library maintenance, check library) will report folders that are really orphans (are not attached to a book), along with several other unusual conditions.

Thanks for that advice! I found five titles that has files names so long that apparently windows choked on them despite the shortest possible path. So I got rid of those titles, and then of course there were five authors whose only entry were the above mentioned books, so I got rid of those authors as well. I am not sure how I overlooked this wonderful tool but am glad to have found it. Part of my problem with Calibre is finding its features and tools. Not the most intuitive (if you think like me not like Kovid ).

[jlutes]

Where is this Library menu you speak of? I'm sure it's right under my nose but I sure don't see it!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by jlutes

Where is this Library menu you speak of? I'm sure it's right under my nose but I sure don't see it!

See Library Icon? See tiny arrow next to it?
That Menu

[jlutes]

Found it - It was not on my toolbar and under the preferences | toolbar menu it was labeled as "choose library". I probably removed the icon because I use 1 library and didn't want to choose a different one :P

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Snauzoo

Part of my problem with Calibre is finding its features and tools. Not the most intuitive (if you think like me not like Kovid ).

I'm not attacking you, but think about it. Suppose you have just developed this feature, now you have to find a place to put it so users can find it. Where?

It's not really a "Preference" is it? It has something to do with fixing a broken library, so perhaps it should go with other non-preference type library tools, like the library selection, library renaming, or the library deletion tools. It seems reasonably intuitive to me.