[unboggling]

I had the same question, how to get metadata from Excel into empty books. Your solution worked for me too on Mac OS X, after dropping the .exe off the calibredb command. You guys are awesome. Thx.


1. Formula in new column on Excel spreadsheet containing a table of Title & Author metadata, filled down to end row of table (for Mac OS X, it's calibredb, for Windows it's calibredb.exe):

=CONCATENATE("calibredb add -e -a """&Table1[@Author]&""" -t """&Table1[@Title]&"""")

yields list of values in that column that looks like this:

calibredb add -e -a "Abercrombie, Joe" -t "Best Served Cold"
calibredb add -e -a "Acevedo, Mario" -t "Jailbait Zombies"
calibredb add -e -a "Acevedo, Mario" -t "Werewolf Smackdown"
calibredb add -e -a "Adrian, Lara" -t "Kiss of Midnight"
calibredb add -e -a "Adrian, Lara" -t "Kiss of Crimson"


2. No need to write script or create other file, on Mac. I copied the range of values and pasted it directly into Terminal window, yielding:
.
Mac-5:~ unboggling$ calibredb add -e -a "Abercrombie, Joe" -t "Best Served Cold"
Backing up metadata
Notifying calibre of the change
Mac-5:~ unboggling$ calibredb add -e -a "Acevedo, Mario" -t "Jailbait Zombies"
Backing up metadata
Notifying calibre of the change
Mac-5:~ unboggling$ calibredb add -e -a "Acevedo, Mario" -t "Werewolf Smackdown"
Backing up metadata
Notifying calibre of the change
Mac-5:~ unboggling$ calibredb add -e -a "Adrian, Lara" -t "Kiss of Midnight"
Backing up metadata
Notifying calibre of the change
Mac-5:~ unboggling$ calibredb add -e -a "Adrian, Lara" -t "Kiss of Crimson"
Backing up metadata
Notifying calibre of the change


And that's it, except for populating metadata in the new empty books from the metadata sites.
Awesome. Thx again.