Is this "bulk edit" problematic in Calibre?

haertig · 07-03-2021, 12:12 PM

I have a Calibre library for "novels" which contains 6000+ books. I want to do some mass editing of the tags (removing some of them). Is this advisable to do on a large quantity of books via the Calibre GUI?

e.g., One of the tag pairs I have is Fiction or Non-Fiction. My entire collection only contains 33 tagged as Non-Fiction, the rest are Fiction. That's a pretty useless tag pair for me to keep maintaining as I add new books. So is it safe to go to the GUI, select every single book (6000+), and then do EditMetadata->RemoveTags and get rid of all Fiction and Non-Fiction tags?

Bottom line: Are large scale bulk edits problematic in Calibre? I am indeed running a very old version of Calibre, version 3.48, on a Linux computer. This is because I simply have seen no reason to upgrade, and potentially mess up the DeDRM plugin that I depend on for all the books I purchase. I used to upgrade Calibre religiously, but stopped when the big internal changes that occurred in version 4 were new and maybe not fully fleshed out at the time. And I stayed stopped on upgrades when I read about incompatibilities of some Calibre versions with DeDRM. That may have all changed by now, but "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It" is a valid upgrade strategy IMHO. If the bulk edit that I want to do now is not safe in 3.48, but is safe in later versions, then that would be a reason for me to upgrade.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

p.s. - My Calibre database is well backed up, so nothing I might attempt and fail at would be a disaster. However, there's no need to make work for myself and have to go through restoring from backup if what I am attempting is known to cause problems. Just don't do potentially problematic things in the first place.

georgemk · 07-03-2021, 12:53 PM

Use the Tag browser, Right click the tag you wish to delete, click the Remove option and it will delete the tag in all books that use it.

haertig · 07-03-2021, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by georgemk

Use the Tag browser, Right click the tag you wish to delete, click the Remove option and it will delete the tag in all books that use it.

I was not aware you could do that directly in the tag browser. Good to know. Simpler than my proposed method of using "Edit Metadata in Bulk". Thanks!

Sirtel · 07-03-2021, 01:20 PM

I use the bulk edit option often, and not only with tags. Nothing has broken so far. And I have over 20,000 books.

Sometimes I use the various tag browser options as well.

chaley · 07-03-2021, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

I was not aware you could do that directly in the tag browser. Good to know. Simpler than my proposed method of using "Edit Metadata in Bulk". Thanks!

Given your concern about problematic behavior and the age of your calibre version (3.48), note that it is possible that the tag browser edit functions have bugs. I don't remember when I added those operations but it could easily have been during calibre 3's lifetime. I know I have fixed problems since version 3's end-of-life.

Bulk metadata edit has been around forever, is well tested, and is reliable.

haertig · 07-03-2021, 02:14 PM

Thanks for the replies. I went and deleted all the extra tags I no longer need. No problems. Lightning fast.

p.s. - I should have said, "No problems reported by Calibre". We'll see as time goes on if anything shows up. But I do daily backups and I keep over a year of them online, so I don't have to worry about new backups overwriting the old for some time. I should notice any problems before then.

07-03-2021, 12:12 PM	#1
haertig Wizard Posts: 1,897 Karma: 31522252 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Fire HD8 Gen7, Moto G7, Sansa Clip v2, Ruizu X26	Is this "bulk edit" problematic in Calibre? I have a Calibre library for "novels" which contains 6000+ books. I want to do some mass editing of the tags (removing some of them). Is this advisable to do on a large quantity of books via the Calibre GUI? e.g., One of the tag pairs I have is Fiction or Non-Fiction. My entire collection only contains 33 tagged as Non-Fiction, the rest are Fiction. That's a pretty useless tag pair for me to keep maintaining as I add new books. So is it safe to go to the GUI, select every single book (6000+), and then do EditMetadata->RemoveTags and get rid of all Fiction and Non-Fiction tags? Bottom line: Are large scale bulk edits problematic in Calibre? I am indeed running a very old version of Calibre, version 3.48, on a Linux computer. This is because I simply have seen no reason to upgrade, and potentially mess up the DeDRM plugin that I depend on for all the books I purchase. I used to upgrade Calibre religiously, but stopped when the big internal changes that occurred in version 4 were new and maybe not fully fleshed out at the time. And I stayed stopped on upgrades when I read about incompatibilities of some Calibre versions with DeDRM. That may have all changed by now, but "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It" is a valid upgrade strategy IMHO. If the bulk edit that I want to do now is not safe in 3.48, but is safe in later versions, then that would be a reason for me to upgrade. Thanks in advance for any tips. p.s. - My Calibre database is well backed up, so nothing I might attempt and fail at would be a disaster. However, there's no need to make work for myself and have to go through restoring from backup if what I am attempting is known to cause problems. Just don't do potentially problematic things in the first place.

07-03-2021, 02:14 PM	#6
haertig Wizard Posts: 1,897 Karma: 31522252 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Fire HD8 Gen7, Moto G7, Sansa Clip v2, Ruizu X26	Thanks for the replies. I went and deleted all the extra tags I no longer need. No problems. Lightning fast. p.s. - I should have said, "No problems reported by Calibre". We'll see as time goes on if anything shows up. But I do daily backups and I keep over a year of them online, so I don't have to worry about new backups overwriting the old for some time. I should notice any problems before then. Last edited by haertig; 07-03-2021 at 02:17 PM.

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07-03-2021, 12:53 PM	#2
georgemk Addict Posts: 243 Karma: 291844 Join Date: Oct 2019 Device: Kobo Nia	Use the Tag browser, Right click the tag you wish to delete, click the Remove option and it will delete the tag in all books that use it.

07-03-2021, 01:20 PM	#4
Sirtel Grand Sorcerer Posts: 13,470 Karma: 239219543 Join Date: Jan 2014 Location: Estonia Device: Kobo Sage & Libra 2	I use the bulk edit option often, and not only with tags. Nothing has broken so far. And I have over 20,000 books. Sometimes I use the various tag browser options as well.

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