I slipped, and clicked something, and the ebook disappeared.

[MarjaE]

I know Calibre can't restore the ebooks, and for some reason it doesn't leave copies in the trash, so is there any fix so I can use Calibre without losing ebooks? I have coordination problems.

[eschwartz]

Well, calibre is supposed to delete things and put them in the Trash. I don't know why it would fail to do that for you. Unless you deleted many books at a time, in which case calibre will skip the trash.

Normally, there would be a confirmation dialog when you try to delete something, but you might have checked the box to ignore further confirmation warnings at some point, You can undo that by going to Preferences ==> Interface ==> Behavior and clicking "Reset all disabled confirmation dialogs".

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, calibre is supposed to delete things and put them in the Trash. I don't know why it would fail to do that for you. Unless you deleted many books at a time, in which case calibre will skip the trash.

Normally, there would be a confirmation dialog when you try to delete something, but you might have checked the box to ignore further confirmation warnings at some point, You can undo that by going to Preferences ==> Interface ==> Behavior and clicking "Reset all disabled confirmation dialogs".

If you delete format files via Remove selected formats (Alt+Del), or right click a format in the Book Details then it's a permanent delete - and both methods allow you to delete all formats... IIRC there was a time when that wasn't so.

And if, as you say, one has ticked the 'ignore in future' box in the confirm delete dialogue then. . . ¡Ay, caramba, they're gone!

IMO, given that removes are sometimes permanent, the confirm dialogue for remove should not be ignore-able.

@MarjaE - I keep the original of all new books in a 'book_acquisitions' folder. At the end of December I will delete all the files in 'book_acquisitions' with a create date earlier than 2015-12-01. By that time I will have 3 library backups - one on a local external disk, another on a commercial FTP server, and another in the cloud.

The existence of the 'book acquisitions' folder has saved me from embarrassment on more than a few occasions, when I've deleted the wrong thing, seriously messed up a conversion, or editing a book, etc etc.

BR

[darryl]

Open up your file manager and check your library directory to see if the books are actually there.

[aleyx]

Also: backups.

Backups, backups, backups. Especially if, as you say, you have coordination problems. Hardware can be replaced (albeit at a cost), but data can be irreplaceable. So, backups.

N.

[theducks]

Do you NOW have a filter in place (with no results)?

What does the status line at the bottom say? [inside the square brackets]

[### books, # selected, ##### total ] (the green only appears if you are viewing a VL)

[MarjaE]

O course I've got backups. It's only the freshly-converted copy in Calbre, that disappeared. A copy turned up in another library. Still, that shouldn't happen by accident.

file manager? filter? huh? My os is my file manager. I'm kinda sick of dealing with special libraries, honestly, though Calibre works a *lot* better than iBooks.

[DoctorOhh]

Glad you found your book.

Originally Posted by MarjaE

O course I've got backups. It's only the freshly-converted copy in Calbre, that disappeared. A copy turned up in another library. Still, that shouldn't happen by accident.

So it looks as if you accidentally chose the "copy to library (delete after copy)" option. In this case (I guess) since the deleted book isn't truly deleted it never gets sent to the recycle bin.