Sharing books

[sceadugenga]

They seem to have gone, that's what I get for messing around aimlessly.
It doesn't matter, there's some aspects of the program I've always considered less than user friendly anyway. I've never been able to put the books in the order I wanted or understand why any books deleted are deleted from your PC files as well.
I'm certainly not going to the trouble of putting several hundred books back on it.

[eric11210]

I know Calibre can seem overwhelming and when technical people try to explain things, they sometimes go way over people's heads, so hopefully this will make it easier to follow:

1. Open Calibre
2. Click the arrow next to "Convert books."
3. Select "Create catalog of books in your library."
The "Generate catalog" window will open.
4. Click the tab labeled "CSV/XML Options."
You will see a list of field names (i.e parts of your list of books). They should all be hi-lighted.
5. Click each field except "Title" and be sure it is no longer hi-lighted. You should now see only "Title" hi-lighted.
6. Click "OK."
After a few seconds (or minutes depending on the size of your catalog), Calibre will show you a dialog box. On Windows 7 it is titled "Browse for Folder." It may have a different title for you.
7. Select a location to save your database. I find it easiest to select the "Desktop."
8. Go to the "Desktop" or wherever you saved the file.
You should see a file called "My Books.CSV."
9. Double click on "My Books.CSV."
Excel should open with the list.
10. Hi-light the first column in Excel, until the end of your list of books.
11. Press "Ctrl + C" (i.e. Press the "Ctrl" key and the "C" key at the same time.
12. Open Word.
13. Press "Ctrl + V" (i.e. Press the "Ctrl" key and the "V" key at the same time.
You should now have a text only list of your books.

I write professionally and at one point took a course in technical writing, learning how to write clear instructions. Ordinarily, I would have done that with screen shots as well, but it's really easy to follow I think and I hope it makes it clear for you how to do this. As I said, I know it can be frustrating sometimes when people try to help because they don't always make things easy for a non techie person to follow (not that this is intentional, but programmers just speak like programmers which is why technical writers are so well paid -- they translate what the programmers say into language everyone else can follow, though personally I found the whole thing to be really boring so I've stuck with slightly less boring content writing.). Let me know if you have any trouble.

Eric

[sceadugenga]

Thanks Eric, I need to find my books first though...

[eric11210]

If they were deleted from Calibre, they should be in the recycle bin. I've found books there myself. If you have Windows 7 (I think Vista does this too), it's very easy. Just open the recycle bin, in the search field type "epub" (or PDF or whatever format your books were in), then wait. Your books should all display. Hi-light all of them, right click, select "cut." Then, create a new folder (right click on the desktop or wherever you'd like to add it, select "new" and then folder). Open the new folder, right click and select "paste." Then, go back to Calibre and click "add books," go to to the new folder, select all of them, click "OK."

Also, Calibre doesn't delete your original copies, but if you delete in Calibre, it does delete copies it manages. I.e. If you follow the method above, the copies in the temporary folder you created will still be there, even if you deleted them from Calibre, but the copies Calibre makes and stores for you in "My Documents" will get deleted if you delete them from Calibre.