Book_ID

[martin_w]

Hi,
I am new to calibre and noticed that a book_id is appended to the explorer directory location (C:\Users\Martin\Documents\Calibre Library\Douglas Adams\Life, the Universe and Everything (2)).
This also shows up if I create a catalogue of my books in the library.
This numbering is no longer consecutive due to books being deleted/replaced.
I know that this is probably trivial, but is there a way to re-order this?

Cheers,
Martin

[BetterRed]

@martin_w - Not easily

The Author and Book Folder names are what 'links' the content of the Books folders to the database in the library root.

If you wanted to make them contiguous you could select all books and use the right click Copy to Library function to move all the books into a an empty library, but I can't imagine why would you want to do that.

BR

[aleyx]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I can't imagine why would you want to do that.

Indeed. book_id is just an identifier, having it be ordered and contiguous is about as pertinent as doing it for ISBNs or UUIDs.

I can understand why you want to do it: they're simple, low-digits integers, and our brains just _want_ to see them in order and contiguous. But that's the point: you shouldn't even have to _see_ them in the first place. Just ignore them when you do.

N.

[theducks]

The only place you CAN see them (by default) is if you are peeking beneath the skirts .

There is almost ZERO reason to be at that location. Calibre delivers books to the user/device without the user needing to know where/how it was stored.

Use the GUI, Luke!

[BetterRed]

@martin_w - my guess is that the reason they're shown in the catalogue is because some calibre CLI utility programs require them as input eg

calibredb set_metadata [options] id [/path/to/metadata.opf]

See calibre - Command Line Interface

If you don't want them shown in the catalogue then you can customise the catalogue see Creating Catalogs: Start here

To see the id for an individual book select the book in the list and press 'i', or double click the cover in the book details. You can also display the id in the Book Details pane by ticking its box in Preferences->Look and Feel->Book details.

BR

[martin_w]

Hi all,
Thanks for the replies, it has cleared it up for me, no more "peaking beneath the skirts"

Cheers,

Martin

[ikkentobi]

Originally Posted by theducks

The only place you CAN see them (by default) is if you are peeking beneath the skirts .

Not quite, I believe.

If you use the integrated web server to download books to your device, then the filename for the epub contains the book number.

(version 1.48, in case this has changed in the meantime)