[Gary_M_Mugford]

Hi all,

My only defense is that I'm on painkillers for a back problem. I did something very, very stupid. I misused the Remove Books|Remove Files of a Specified Format options to get rid of a bunch of extra PDFs that I had converted to Mobi's. What I was SUPPOSED to do was run a filter (formats:"=PDF" and formats:"=MOBI") but I 'missed' that step first and then selected All. When I then did the Remove Books thing, I should have twigged that things were awry when I had MORE choices than just Mobi and PDF. But, like I said, I was on drugs. Pressing OK made approximately 157 books go poof.

I actually realized my Oops pretty quickly and used Windows 7's restore from the recycle bin to put the books back. But, of course, that didn't return them to the humble database, a database I hadn't backed up in five days (an error in my nightly backup batch file had left me without backup via that method, but I still had my most recent weekly backup batch file working). My backup of THAT database shows a date that would result in the expunging of approximately 160 books that I entered in that five day period. And by books, I mean a mixture of new books but mostly PDF's of magazine articles and my own writings. The PDF's that I deleted en masse stretch back about three months. BUT they are all still there in the folders. It's just that the database no longer recognizes that fact.

So, I CAN recover from this. I can open each folder and re-import the book. It creates a new entry that has none of the metadata I typed in, which frequently included title changes, tags and assorted other stuff. Then I have to delete the original. And all the while, I wonder if I'm clobbering stuff by importing FROM the actual Calibre assigned data folder TO it again. But I think that's better than reverting.

Am I right? Or is there a better way to suck the actual existing formats back into calibre and have it update the current entry with all of its attendant metadata?

Thanks in advance, GM