Aura HD Read Yes/No To Kobo

[Tan]

I have a custom column in Calibre "Read" with a yes/no (tick or cross) answer I have put in for all my ebooks. What is the best way of putting that across to my Kobo? I don't want to have to do it manually on the Kobo by opening each book and going to the end so it is marked as finished.
I do not understand how to create the "strings" used in metadata plugboards though I have been reading up on it all morning, the lookup search name for "Read" is #yesno.

[davidfor]

My Kobo Utilities can set the reading status of books on the Kobo devices. There are two ways.

The "Update metadata in device library" allows you to change the metadata for the books that are selected in the library list. This includes options to set the reading status. So, select all the books with a "Y" and use this to mark them as read.

The store/restore function will store the current reading status of the books on the device in the calibre library. This can be restored to the device later. The status set when restoring is based on the percent read. If this is 100, then the book is marked as read. If you read a book elsewhere, you can set the percent read to 100 and use the restore to set the status on the device.

I use the latter method. I also use a column icon to set the display based on the percent read. 100% gets a tick and anything between 1 and 100 gets an opened book. Unread has nothing displayed.

[Tan]

Thanks again Davidfor. Where is the store/restore function?

[Tan]

Ok, I think I get it. I have created a column called Bk Mark. In Kobo utilities that's my current reading location column, I've ticked store current book marks on connect and ticked prompt to store any changes. Is this correct? How do you use a column icon to set display based on % read?

[Tan]

I think its worked! I plugged the Kobo into the laptop and now a string of stuff has appeared in the Bk Mark Column of the books I'm reading!!! YAY!!! Thanks again. The icon thing would be great though!

[davidfor]

Firstly, I don't display the reading position in the library list. It doesn't add anything. I do display the percent read and last read timestamp. Those I find useful in the list.

For the column icon, this is in the calibre preferences. Go to the "Look & Feel" and then the "Custom icon" tab. Then you add a rule. What I would suggest is:

- First drop down- "Icon without text"
- Second drop down: My percent read custom column
- Third drop down: Selected the icon to be displayed. These have to be added to the list using the "Add icon" button. For "read", I used the green tick that calibre uses in various places.

Then in the conditions:

- First drop down: My percent read custom column
- Second drop down: is equal to
- Value: 100

All that means is "if the percent read field is equal to 100, display the green tick in the percent read column without the value".

Then add a second rule that shows a different icon if the percent read is greater than 0. In this case, I use "icon with text". That gives a good visual indication plus I can see how far through the book I am.

The rules are processed from top to bottom. With these settings, it stops at the first match. There are ways to have it match several rules and display several icons.

The rules can be a lot more complicated than that. For mine I also use the Reading List plugin and set some icons based on that. I've attached a small screen shot showing this. The open book means "reading", the green tick is "read", the star means "to rate" on whatever site it came from or Goodreads and the blue arrow means is an in-progress story from some web site. The first two are based on the percent read, the others the reading list.

[Tan]

Thanks Davidfor, have done what you have suggested.