Updating Metadata in Bulk

[Turt99]

I'm looking to edit the metadata on all my books, The download bulk feature works great but now I need to clean up the downloaded information and since my Kobo doesn't do collections I'm looking to add the series name to the beginning of the title.

For example I've been putting

Enders Saga 01 - Enders Game

This way I know the correct order of the books and they are all located together, the problem I'm having is that when I say edit individually I get an edit window for each but the window is taking 10 seconds each book (might be my computer Aspire One Netbook) so each book take the 10 seconds to load the screen then I need to look up the series information (Amazon.com or Wikipedia) making it very time consuming. Plus I have hit the Next button several times when I wasn't finished with the book so I'll need to go through all the books again to validate I guess. I was wondering if there was a way to edit the data in a spreadsheet layout?

I saw somewhere that there are command line controls maybe I could export a spreadsheet of the current data make some changes and then write a script to push it back in?

Its not as simple as manipulating the current data since some of the books don't have the real series information currently.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Turt99

I was wondering if there was a way to edit the data in a spreadsheet layout?

You can edit in the library view by double-clicking on the entry you wish to change.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Turt99

since my Kobo doesn't do collections I'm looking to add the series name to the beginning of the title.

For example I've been putting

Enders Saga 01 - Enders Game

There are lots of ways to approach the problem you asked about, but are you 100% certain you want to change the title of the books in the Calibre database? Can't you just change the filename saved out via either Send to Device or Save to Disk? That's the preferred way to do this, and keeps your database correct for when you change readers. Have you looked at the Save to Device templates in Preferences | Add/Save | Send tab and in the Plugin for your e-reader? If neither of those will do it, what about sending to it as a USB disk - does your device support that?

If none of those will do it, then there are some bulk metadata options you can consider.

[Turt99]

Doesn't the eReader, (mine is a Kobo) just read the Metadata? I don't think changing the file name will make any difference once its loaded to the reader.

Plus as I mentioned the data isn't complete at this point so even if I'm just going to populate the Series information in the correct way (using the field in Calibre) I'm still looking at the same bulk edit issue.

Also your right it might be better to use the correct metadata information so that its clean if I switch readers at some point.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Turt99

Doesn't the eReader, (mine is a Kobo) just read the Metadata? I don't think changing the file name will make any difference once its loaded to the reader.

It probably depends on the e-reader and software. I haven't got an ereader (I use PDAs and phones) and some of my software reads the filename, and other software reads metadata.

Plus as I mentioned the data isn't complete at this point so even if I'm just going to populate the Series information in the correct way (using the field in Calibre) I'm still looking at the same bulk edit issue.

Also your right it might be better to use the correct metadata information so that its clean if I switch readers at some point.

You'll have to decide what data you want in Calibre, but I'd lean towards correct metadata if you can get it work with your reader. As to bulk changes, what's wrong with selecting all the books you want to change and using the bulk metadata editor?

[Turt99]

Now that I have taken a closer look at the Bulk Metadata Editor I think it covers most of what I'm looking for. I thought at first I was just going to let me set everything the same. It looks like it does a little more then that.