[chaley]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Hi,

I've been looking for this issue, but i have found nothing about it.

I have a problem when I'm merging two records when there're some difference in the metadata info. If I merge two fields which are date or number, if the destination field has a value, it keeps untouched. If I merge two fields which are defined as text with restricted values, however, if the destination field has a value, and the origin field is empty, the value in the destination filed is removed.

I don't know if it's normal, I'm doing something wrong. Any help will be welcome. BTW, it's not related to calibre 2.X, it worked in the same way before.

I have Win7 and I am running calibre 32bits (calibre 64 works the same too, I've tested it).

Thanks in advance.

The problem comes from how selections work.

If you select using the shift key (click on a book, press shift, click on another book), the selection is ordered from top to bottom no matter which book you clicked on first. Thus even if you clicked on the second in the list then the first, the second is being merged into the first as if you had clicked on the first then the second.

If you select using the control key then Qt remembers the order. Click on the second in the list then ctrl-click on the first, after which the first will be merged into the second.

I tested this as follows:

1. Create an empty book. Give it a title "Book 1" and an author "Author 1"
2. Create another empty book. Give it a title "Book 2" and an author "Author 2"
3. Sort the display by title. Book 1 will be above book 2.

Experiment 1

1. Edit metadata for Book 1. Assign a value to an Enumerated (fixed set of values) column.
2. Click on Book 1.
3. Shift-click on Book 2.
4. Alt-M to merge without deletion.

The enum value in book 1 is gone, replaced by the empty value in book 2. This is as it should be, because the target book is Book 1.

Experiment 2

1. Edit metadata for Book 1. Assign a value to an Enumerated (fixed set of values) column.
2. Click on Book 2.
3. Shift-click on Book 1.
4. Alt-M to merge without deletion.

Again, the enum value in book 1 is gone. This is because even though you clicked on book 2 first, Qt reports that the first book in the selection is book 1, so calibre merges Book 2 into Book 1 just as in experiment 1.

Experiment 3

1. Edit metadata for Book 1. Assign a value to an Enumerated (fixed set of values) column.
2. Click on Book 2.
3. Ctrl-click on Book 2.
4. Alt-M to merge without deletion.

This time the enum value from book 1 is copied into book 2 because Qt reports that the first selection is Book 2, making that book the target.

Bottom line: if you use shift-click to select, the target book must be the first one (highest one) in the selection list. This is true no matter what order you used to select the books.