Quote:
Originally Posted by kiwidude
@unboogling - I find the faster way to do this is to definitely not bring them all into calibre, instead only the format version you want to keep.
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Thanks. What I'd been doing is importing a few at a time, then evaluating them in calibre, then only importing and evaluating other formats if the first wasn't good.
Your way seems most efficient but also requires going only a few at a time. I should probably start evaluating formats in the OS first before import to calibre, a few at a time. But for a large bulk import in which there are usually multiple formats of a title, where the authors are sorted FN LN by the OS, I was thinking I could import in bulk, then without making many changes except standardizing Author/Series/Title, Save Out so that the books would be sorted by LN FN. I haven't figured out a way to use a file renamer across all the Author directories at once in bulk to do the switch to LN, FN in the OS. (Also, one of the drawbacks to Adding to calibre then Saving out is losing the original OS file-modified date in the Save.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kiwidude
I use windows explorer search to lookup an author and/or title name in my "unsorted" folders, then just directly double-click on the search results. Once I have my preferred format to import only then do I stick it in calibre. That way you have other information visible to you like file size etc to help dictate your ordering of "likelihood" of a best version, duplicates etc. You also don't have to look at every format either.
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In the case of this particular source folder, I don't like working with the OS's FN LN sort when calibre's sort is LN FN. It's time consuming to orient and switch back and forth between the the different sorts. Searching the Source folder by author in OS is what I normally do for most Source folders. But in this one there are multiple duplicates of variously named authors and titles across differently named author folders and title folders throughout this Source folder. So evaluating in the OS doesn't seem as efficient as doing it in calibre where some time consuming bulk metadata edits will at least eventually put all the copies of the same book into conjunction in the calibre sort or search, while evaluating in the OS would not have them in conjunction. EDIT: The Source folder is a mess regarding naming conventions. An OS search doesn't find everything. Some authors names are missing. Some use series instead of author. File names for title dupes are not necessarily the same, some include author, some include series, some include abbreviations for title, some don't include entire title.
I'll probably have to go back to the few-at-a-time method. Evaluate out in the OS as you do. But I wanted to find a way to group all author/title dupes from across the Source folder first, which seems to require a preliminary evaluation and metadata edit of Author, Series, and Title.