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Originally Posted by sumant28
I would like a bit more detail if possible. I am new to Calibre and this feels like a rather advanced operation. First of all I have to mention that I don't have any books in my Calibre because the sole motivation for me to use Calibre is this one specific purpose. Given this should I upload the books from my device or get it from the Kobo app/web site? It seems like Kobo device data might override desktop data or something so I want to be sure.
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In general, the source of the book doesn't matter. What you need is an entry in your calibre library for each book on the device. For me, that means I add the book to calibre. For books from Kobo, I download the epub version from the my library on the Kobo store. That gets added to calibre and when I next connect the device, it will match to the book on the device. If the book comes from somewhere else, add the book to calibre and send it to the device. After that, when I start reading the book and connect the device, it automatically fetches the reading status.
You can do this using an "empty" book. This is when you add the record for a book to the library, but, don't add a file. This is what I do when I borrow a book from the library. I don't own it, so I don't add the actual book to calibre. But, I want to record that I have read it. You can add an empty book by right-clicking the add book button and selecting the option for it. You will be prompted to add the title and author and optionally the series.
Once I have a book in calibre, I also update all the metadata using the Download metadata function. I generally find the details included in the books are fairly basic. Downloading the metadata means I get better descriptions, tag and other details. Plus better quality covers.
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Also I am lost on where I customise the dialog boxes and how. I attached images of where it seems I need to make changes. The dialog box with "Percent Read Column" doesn't have any drop down options
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Both the Goodreads Sync and Kobo Utilities plugins use custom columns to store information in. You need to create those columns. And, at the moment, that has to be done using the "Add your own columns" page of the calibre Preferences. I have updated the Kobo Utilities plugin in the last few days to have an option to create them from the configuration dialog. But, that depends on a change that will be in the next version of calibre. There may be a release today, but, it might be next week. And both plugins have help that should explain what the columns needed should look like.
Once the columns have been created, you need to select them in the configuration dialogs for the two plugins. After that, when you fetch the reading status from the Kobo device, you will be prompted to update the library with the status. That dialog has an option at the bottom to update Goodreads. When you accept the changes, the "Update Reading Progress" for the books will be displayed. You can make some changes on that dialog and press the "Update Progress" button to make the changes on GR.
And note, the dialog in the middle screenshot is not involved here. That is to allow you to update the metadata on the device to match that in the library. It is usually used because you have changed something after sending the book to the device. It is not as needed now as the driver can do this automatically. The lower section of the dialog can change the reading status of the books, but, it is simplistic and only sets the status using the current date where needed.