Moving books between libraries

[kensmosis]

For various reasons, I want to split an existing Calibre Library in two. After creating a new library, there does not seem to be an obvious way to move books from the old one. By "move", I mean that a copy with all files, metadata, column names, tags, etc should appear in the new library and the copy (including any files) in the old library should disappear. That is, the book and all its ancillary info should cleanly and completely be transferred between the libraries. I could add the books from the old library to the new one as files -- but that would lose a lot of the column and tag data, and I'd still need to remove them from the old library. Is there a library-level operation that can do this? I imagine having two copies of calibre open and dragging from one to the other -- or something like that. Perhaps I could simply move the relevant subdirectories from one library to another and then run a regen or fix command to reacquire any central info? The number of documents being transferred is in the thousands and I'll be picking and choosing by hand -- so anything to reduce the manual work involved would be a great help. I guess I could consider this as 2 questions: (1) is there a move op as described, and (2) how would I efficiently perform it on many books (i.e. interface).
Apologies if this question has been asked; I didn't see anything analogous in the forums, but if there is some other term for the op I may have missed it. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Terisa de morgan]

Copy to library (removing for the previous one) doesn't work for you?

[kensmosis]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Copy to library (removing for the previous one) doesn't work for you?

Thanks so much; that's just the trick, and way better than I had hoped for!!! Calibre is such a well-designed program I should have realized there would be such a feature. I guess I misunderstood the purpose of "Copy to Library". I'm including a brief description of what to do below -- just in case some newbie like me has a similar question down the road:

The first thing to note is that the Copy to Library button is not included in the toolbar by default (or at least wasn't on mine), so it should be added in prefs for convenience. Also, I should note that if you give the two libraries different names, quick switching, etc will be a lot easier than if they both are indistinguishable as "Calibre Library". Suppose the two libraries are named "FROMLIB" and "TOLIB". Switch Calibre to library FROMLIB using the "Calibre Library" button. Select the books to transfer and hit the "Copy to Library" button. Choose "TOLIB (delete after copy)". Switch back to TOLIB using the "Calibre Library" button, and they are there.

[BetterRed]

@kensmosis - another tip, when you can't find the means to do something like this. try right clicking where you think it might be - chances are it will be there - and a whole lot more besides Almost everything in calibre is right clickable.

BR

[theducks]

The Official name for right-click menus is: Context Menu

Even Windows has them

And they are really useful. In many cases, no need to move to the menu bat/icons

W10 moved (consolidated) many handy System features to the Right-click on the Windows 10 (start button) icon