[Starson17]

Originally Posted by travger

I counted 26 mississippis while Calibre opened, it's definately MUCH longer than I am willing to wait to drag-and-drop a file.

Mine runs 24/7 (so I can access all my books from France and my neighbor's home). I only add in groups, or occasionally, so less than 30 seconds to open wouldn't bother me, even if I did have to open it to add a new book.

So it looks like I'd better store the library somewhere more accessible - like desktop. But when I tried to move it, I got:

ERROR: ERROR: Unhandled exception:

A typo was made in the code. It's already fixed.

Though - I added 100+ files, now C. library has 100+ folders and no info to find series.
(I do not connect device, only SD card)

You can treat the SD card as a device if you wish. I do.

-I'd prefer it to be 'Lastname-series#-Title', so same authors and series are grouped together in Mobi library screen. Or at least 'series#-Title'. Palm reader won't show series info in the library screen.
Is it doable?

Yes. The setting is in Pref|Add/Save|Save

never delete.
You can't be serious?!

Feel free to delete if you want. I always keep the original. I may need to convert it and the original is the best place to start.

'It depends on your settings. Assuming you do not have my automated sorting option turned on, it will make two separate records.'
What and where is automatic sorting?

Pref|Add/Save|checkbox "If books with similar ....found ... merge ... automatically"

Will it put both pdf-s into same folder or just grab one and hide another one forever?

Calibre only allows one pdf per record. If you are adding multiple pdfs, they must have a different author or title with this option turned on. If they have the same author and the same title and the same format, and you still want them both in the database, you should leave this option off.

Or is it the same I can now do with merge - prc, pdf, txt, jpg all together?

?? Merge is manual. The option-with-a-name-that's-too-long (automatic merge) is automatic sorting. Both have the same limitation of one format type per record.

Seems that any initial data has to be gotten from filenames,

Personally, "get metadata only from filename" works best for me, but if your internal metadata is good, that may work better for you.

For now I must change Author/title for every entry manually.

You should only have to do this if 1) your filenames are not consistently named with author/title and 2) the file has bad internal metadata.

Then I can bulk download metadata - but not always.

You can always try to get metadata by bulk, but the databases online aren't necessarily complete, some have odd author names or titles, etc.

Thing is, my filenames are also a pretty mixed lot. So I have to visit preferences every time I add some books? (or standardize prior to adding). I got the regular expression to recognize series, but have no idea how to explain numbers. My preferred filename is
Lastname - series# - Title (the x00 I have changed)
How to get # where it belongs?

There are several threads on regex creation. That's what you need. Try searching here for regex, regexp, regular expressions.

How to enter a book which has many stories, many authors and some stories belong to different series? Omnibuses?

I use tags: "multibook" and "omnibus"

Must say, I'm even more confused now and no way will I add any more folders - until i at least have SOME control over results.

It is important to make sure your books are added with at least the correct author/title. When I've got several copies, I try to add only the one I know is better, or I add a comment or a tag to mark each copy.

If you have several books in a folder you were given at your birthday, then mark them all with the tag "birthday" or whatever will remind you about what you know concerning these books. I always try to keep all the info I have about a book when I add it. Usually all that info is in the folder name or the title of the book, and I capture all that during the import by marking it all with a tag or a comment, etc.