Thread: opf files and managing metadata
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Old 12-03-2014, 01:43 PM   #5
BetterRed
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Quote:
Originally Posted by please55 View Post
In that scenario, how would you recover the metadata from the opf file and sync it with each book?

Are there any other tools that save the info right to the book as is? Is all metadata saved (including custom fields you might have created in calibre)?

Any insight on this particular? Does the add book from directories do this or does that just look for ebooks and ignore opf files in the folder?
@please55 - forget about the metadata.opf files, they are for calibres internal use if/when a database (metadata.opf) needs to be rebuilt. Furthermore at any given point in time they might NOT contain the very latest metadata that's in the database, this because the writing of the opfs runs in background at low priority. Pretend they don't exist.

You can populate the database from the metadata within a book thus:
  1. when you add it to the library, in Preferences->Add Books you define whether metadata is to be extracted from the book file or from the file name.
  2. in Metadata edit, by selecting a format and hitting the blue I icon

You can populate the the metadata data in a book in several ways
  1. by Sending a format (epub, mobi, pdf etc) to a device, or Saving it to disk, in which case the file sent/saved will contain such metadata that the format is capable of having within it - eg epubs can have more than MOBI and PDF's.

    But the format files in the library itself are not changed - many users prefer to leave the format files in the library untouched.
  2. by using the Embed Metadata(most formats), Polish Book (EPUB and AZW only) or Modify (EPUB only) plugins. These will update the format files in the library itself.

    Conversion will also update the metadata in the output file - but if you just want to update the metadata in an existing format then I would suggest using one of the other three tools, conversions are slower and can potentially alter the content of the book.

I can't answer the issue of adding books from a folder that contains an opf. Mainly because I can't recall any books I've purchased ever having them, I thought they were peculiar to calibre - especially if they're named metadata.opf.

BR
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