Library won't open properly after moving it; how to export better?

[mlevin77]

A complete Calibre folder (including subfolders and metadata db file) from a library of about 2500 books (most without fulltext content) was moved from an XP system to a MacOS system using Dropbox. On the Mac, it complained about corruption and gave this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/ui.py", line 511, in library_moved
File "site-packages/calibre/library/database2.py", line 221, in __init__
File "site-packages/calibre/library/database2.py", line 510, in initialize_dynamic
File "site-packages/calibre/library/caches.py", line 978, in refresh
File "site-packages/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 314, in run
DatabaseException: unknown string format
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 271, in run
File "site-packages/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 172, in get
File "site-packages/calibre/library/sqlite.py", line 40, in _c_convert_timestamp
File "site-packages/calibre/utils/date.py", line 80, in parse_date
File "site-packages/dateutil/parser.py", line 697, in parse
File "site-packages/dateutil/parser.py", line 303, in parse
ValueError: unknown string format

when I allowed it to rebuild, less than half of the books were there. What's going on - how do I figure out what is corrupted/missing and is there a better way to export it on the XP side (perhaps as a single archive file - is there a conversion/export module?) so that I get everything on the Mac side?

[theducks]

Did you try using a USB pen drive (and leave dropbox out of the picture)?

Can MAC's use Windows 'Shared' folders? Just copy the Library folder that way.

[kovidgoyal]

Mac sure you are using the same version of calibre on both OSes.

[mlevin77]

Aha, this did it - ZIP'ing the whole directory (rather than copying all the files via Dropbox) solved it. Thank you all!