merging and renaming duplicates

DragonsDream · 02-25-2013, 08:55 AM

Hi!
First post here from a new user.

I am about to scan in several hundred ebooks/stories/downloaded web pages of fan fiction in Calibre. I have many stories in multiple formats and sometime in multiple locations. One of the things I want to do is find all my (exact) duplicates and be able to delete all but one. I'm pretty clear on how to do this in Calibre. However, I also want to find duplicate file names that aren't necessarily exact duplicate files and merge them into one record without deleting either file (at least until I compare them).

Let me see if I can explain with an example:

In Drive X in scanned folder "Fan Fiction from Some Cool Web Site" I have the files:
Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.epub
Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.html

and in Drive Y in scanned folder "Fan Fiction I grabbed from Newsgroups 15 years ago" I have the file:
Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.html
except that this html is one I made myself from an original text file.

Now, when I scan Drive X, Calibre will create one entry for "Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever" and include 2 formats for it. This is great.

What I am concerned with though is when I scan Drive Y and it finds "Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.html" again. I can tell it to add it anyway even though it's a dupe, and I wind up with a second entry for the title. If I want to merge this entry with the first one, I can't find a way to add the 2nd HTML as yet another version of the first entry. I want to do this since it might be a different file even though it has the same name.

Ultimately, before I delete any files, i want to verify that they are in fact duplicates. Currently, my files are such a mess that I need something like Calibre just to get them all in one place where I can even begin to sort out the dupes.

Any help would be much appreciated.

itimpi · 02-25-2013, 10:17 AM

Calibre will only let you have one format of an ebook associated with a particular database entry. Therefore in the case you mentioned you would need to have multiple entries (which Calibre DOES allow) for the same book. You could alter decide which of these (if any is superfluous) and if it makes sense merge entries.

02-25-2013, 08:55 AM	#1
DragonsDream Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2013 Device: none	merging and renaming duplicates Hi! First post here from a new user. I am about to scan in several hundred ebooks/stories/downloaded web pages of fan fiction in Calibre. I have many stories in multiple formats and sometime in multiple locations. One of the things I want to do is find all my (exact) duplicates and be able to delete all but one. I'm pretty clear on how to do this in Calibre. However, I also want to find duplicate file names that aren't necessarily exact duplicate files and merge them into one record without deleting either file (at least until I compare them). Let me see if I can explain with an example: In Drive X in scanned folder "Fan Fiction from Some Cool Web Site" I have the files: Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.epub Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.html and in Drive Y in scanned folder "Fan Fiction I grabbed from Newsgroups 15 years ago" I have the file: Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.html except that this html is one I made myself from an original text file. Now, when I scan Drive X, Calibre will create one entry for "Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever" and include 2 formats for it. This is great. What I am concerned with though is when I scan Drive Y and it finds "Stargate SG1 - The Best Story Ever.html" again. I can tell it to add it anyway even though it's a dupe, and I wind up with a second entry for the title. If I want to merge this entry with the first one, I can't find a way to add the 2nd HTML as yet another version of the first entry. I want to do this since it might be a different file even though it has the same name. Ultimately, before I delete any files, i want to verify that they are in fact duplicates. Currently, my files are such a mess that I need something like Calibre just to get them all in one place where I can even begin to sort out the dupes. Any help would be much appreciated.

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02-25-2013, 10:17 AM	#2
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	Calibre will only let you have one format of an ebook associated with a particular database entry. Therefore in the case you mentioned you would need to have multiple entries (which Calibre DOES allow) for the same book. You could alter decide which of these (if any is superfluous) and if it makes sense merge entries.