Quote:
Originally Posted by theducks
If you use Find Duplicates: Sort the results on 'Date' column, them select the top one FIRST (the first selected is the destination)as part of the Merge. (assumes sort arrow low.High)
|
This is not going to work because the Find Duplicates plugin will change the sorting to be always based on the marked field. This is the only way the plugin is able to keep books of the same duplicate group next to each other. So if you try sorting before using the plugin, it will fail because the plugin will override your sort options. Also if you try sorting after the duplicates results are displayed, it will mess up you duplicates results (if you displaying all groups simultaneously), and as soon as you press next/previous group, Find Duplicates will re-override you sort options again.
@ meghane_e : If you want to control the sorting with the Find Duplicates plugin, do the following:
- Use the advanced mode of the plugin, which allows to control how each duplicate group is sorted. You can choose the sorting to be based on timestamps in ascending order so that the oldest book is always the first book in the group. For more on how to use sorting in advanced mode, refer to this post.
- After that, you can manually merge the books group by group. Another option is to use the export duplicates menu entry to generate a json file containing the duplicates group. This file can then be fed to a custom script to merge duplicate groups.
I have a custom action (that works in the Action Chains plugin) that can merge all the duplicates this way automatically. It always merges the books into the first one in the group, so if you have your groups sorted as pointed above, it should do what you want.
If you are interested in this, I can post it here. But be warned though, this will be a destructive action with no way to restore merged books. So, you have to test this on test library first to make sure it working as you expect it. This will be offered with no guarantees. Any thing going wrong is totally your responsibility. Also note that this merges all duplicate groups, so you have to weed out the groups (By marking them as exempt) you do not want merged before using the export feature.