[Starson17]

Originally Posted by citac

It really gets on my nerves that it imports even plain html as zip files, even though it makes sense to me that it should do so with web pages.

You might prefer that calibre use .zip for some html files and .html for others, but I certainly would not. I want the same extension for all files of the same format. I don't think the file extension should be dependent on the ebook content.

Also, be aware that the zip processing of even a single file html ebook does more than just compress the single file. Look inside the zip file produced by the plugin to see the other files created and stored in the zip file.

I want my plain html to stay plain html

Then disable the processing plugin.

I would like to convert my txt files to epub, and probably web pages too. I don't understand the need for it.

I'm not really sure what the problem is other than that you don't like the way Calibre has to handle multiple file html ebooks? Is it interfering with how you use the html files?

If I choose Edit metadata individually, there's no search&replace;

Correct. "Metadata" isn't content, and calibre isn't an editor, so you won't find any way to edit content on that page. You also won't find any way to search and replace metadata since you've only got one book. Just change whatever needs to be changed.

if I choose bulk editing, there's a search&replace tab,

Yes. It's for searching and finding/changing metadata, not content.

I have several options which again don't work for me. I enter the <meta name='author' content='Grzegorz Hordynski' /> string, and replace it with the proper author, it shows up in the test text, but hitting Apply does absolutely nothing.

It sounds like you are trying to change content. You can't do that there. It's on the Conversion screen. It will do it, but it's not really intended for what you are doing.

How do I achieve what I'm after?

I'm not certain what you are trying to do? Change content? Before importing to Calibre? (You can't) After importing (Convert from zip/html to your destination format and use S&R/regex. (I'm not sure why you want/need to change this content if you already have imported the ebook.) Change metadata? That's what Calibre is best at. Select the books and bulk edit, then S&R.

I have authors who have written over 40 works and I cannot edit them all. What am I doing wrong?

Explain the goal, then we can help. If I'm guessing, you should import them all, highlight them all and use bulk edit to fix the authors. It should only take a few minutes. If you need to change content, you'll have to do them individually (personally, I'd use Ultraedit to do it globally 0 Calibre isn't the best tool, even if it will do it.)