Adding Books to Library

[MikeHackney]

Over the years I have acquired thousands of ebooks on my computer. I keep them in a folder called My ebooks. Also over the years I have changed my PC a few times or reinstalled windows, each time downloading a new Calibre app.
To ‘Add Books’ to my Calibre library individually is an endless chore, some are in files, some, by one author, are in folders.
Is it possible for Calibre to search throughout the computer for ebooks and import them into Calibre like Picasa does with my photos.
This would be a big improvement.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by MikeHackney

Over the years I have acquired thousands of ebooks on my computer. I keep them in a folder called My ebooks. Also over the years I have changed my PC a few times or reinstalled windows, each time downloading a new Calibre app.
To ‘Add Books’ to my Calibre library individually is an endless chore, some are in files, some, by one author, are in folders.
Is it possible for Calibre to search throughout the computer for ebooks and import them into Calibre like Picasa does with my photos.
This would be a big improvement.

No. (and not all 'books' (the standard formats) belong in a library. My bank statements are PDF )

Why haven't you just copied your Library (name) folder across to the New PC or restored it from backup?

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[marvin_2]

You could either copy all individual ebook files to one folder, and all the ebooks in subfolders into another folder, then 'Add books' with the 'every file is a different book' and 'all files are the same book in different formats' - options, respectively. Two mouseclicks to import all your ebooks (plus a few Windows-searches for the various book-file extensions if the ebooks are all over the place.)

The other option is use a utility like 'files2folder' (download and run as adminstrator to install as shell extension) to create a subdirectory for each individual ebook file, then import the whole lot with the 'all files in a folder are the same book in a different format' - option.

PS: If you ebook files are in different calibre libraries already, you can just copy them all into a single library without re-importing (make sure to set the right duplicate/merge options in the preferences first.) To copy, select all the books you want to copy and choose the copy-command in the right-click menu.

[jecilop]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your question based on the always helpful other users who have responded, but just in case I'm right.....

Assuming you are essentially "starting over" on your latest Calibre...
You've asked how to import all the books in a single folder even if it has subfolders.
I do this all the time.
Simply:

1. open Calibre,
2. hit "F" (same as Add Books, 3rd option down)
3. then navigate to the highest level folder (in your case My ebooks),
4. Double click your highest level folder (My ebooks).
5. Click Select Folder at bottom.

All formats that you have Calibre set up to read will import. I'm not sure if other will import even if Calibre isn't there default for them. I'll assume since you used them in Calibre version before this isn't an issue.

When you double-click your highest level folder, it may look like you need to do more. What you see is any subfolders; you do not see files. That is ok. Select Folder means you are selecting whatever you've double-clicked.

There are THREE CAVEATS to this....

1. Metadata: If you did not save any customized metadata in individual files, that will be gone. If a file is in a single folder with an .opf file, you will likely have your metadata.
2. Custom Column Metadata: If you had any custom columns when managing the books, you will need to recreate those custom columns exactly according to the lookup name BEFORE import. Otherwise, that info will not import.
3. Be sure to check your Adding Books Preferences before doing this.

"Thousands of books" can be a few to tens of thousands. I highly recommend so as to avoid lock-ups that you break up your My ebooks folder into at least a few primary subfolders, then do this process to each of those. It will import faster in my experience as that is a lot of files that have to be written by Calibre. It will also let you import a few hundred at once after checking the caveats above and making sure it is doing what you want without waiting for hours (assuming not lockups) for everything to import at once.

I hope this helps.

P.S.: As someone who used to manage my own files and folders prior to finding Caliber and then thought Caliber would just help me fix metadata and not manage them, let me also highly suggest your use Caliber to the fullest potential of management. I discovered it's power for a LARGE library and only regret not using it a year or two prior when I first saw the name. Then, you can always recover your library easily. Also, should you want to "grab some files" with individual names and formats (Author-Series 01-Title.epub or .mobi), you can always use Save to Disk. I do this all the time to send to a custom folder used for my ebook reader.

[cybmole]

so telling calibre to import from C:/ and to include subfolders in that process could find & import every e-book format file on the PC?

but would it go down a recursive black hole when it gets to its own library folders ?

[jecilop]

Originally Posted by cybmole

so telling calibre to import from C:/ and to include subfolders in that process could find & import every e-book format file on the PC?

but would it go down a recursive black hole when it gets to its own library folders ?

Yes, starting at C:/ would do that.
It would be surprising that a user wouldn't have a general idea of the location of books anyhow. A search of *.epub or *.mobi would point to the location of such files to narrow down the folder locations of the files. If needed, a user could compile there books into a primary locations to do such an import.

Why would anyone want to start at C:/ anyhow?

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by jecilop

Why would anyone want to start at C:/ anyhow?

that is what the OP said he wanted to do: scan the whole computer

[theducks]

Hasn't anyone thought of doing MORE THAN ONE PASS (so you can eliminate the OS and programs paths?
Maybe Calibre Add needs a switch like:

XCOPY  /EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]...
               Specifies a list of files containing strings.  Each string
               should be in a separate line in the files.  When any of the
               strings match any part of the absolute path of the file to be
               copied, that file will be excluded from being copied.  For
               example, specifying a string like \obj\ or .obj will exclude
               all files underneath the directory obj or all files with the
               .obj extension respectively.

[jecilop]

Originally Posted by cybmole

that is what the OP said he wanted to do: scan the whole computer

Ah. Sorry, Cybmole.
I was stuck on the first part of what he said about keeping them in a folder called My ebooks.

I didn't even catch that.

[MikeHackney]

I am indebted to all of you. I have now done what I wanted to do and added my ‘thousands of books’, I had no idea there was such a wealth of knowledge out there and so freely given. Thank you all for your kind help. Mike.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by MikeHackney

I am indebted to all of you. I have now done what I wanted to do and added my ‘thousands of books’, I had no idea there was such a wealth of knowledge out there and so freely given. Thank you all for your kind help. Mike.

I hope you enjoy using calibre to organise your books. I kept mine in a set of folders by author for several years, and I'm delighted that I switched over to calibre.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by cybmole

that is what the OP said he wanted to do: scan the whole computer

He doesn't... or better, he shouldn't

If he does that, everything that calibre will be able to open will end up in the library. Changelogs... logs... textfiles.... zipfiles that contain text or HTML; everything.

To OP: If you haven't already organized everyting, I would advise to do a search for your books using the search function of your operating system. Then select the books you want and copy them to a separate folder. Then import from there.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I hope you enjoy using calibre to organise your books. I kept mine in a set of folders by author for several years, and I'm delighted that I switched over to calibre.

Calibre is to ebooks what Foobar is to music, with one big difference.

Calibre's author is not a jackass, while Foobar's author is. (IMHO.)

The Foobar author is the "It's going to be done like I want it to be done" kind of guy, even refusing help offered (such as program translations). If there was a program as powerful as Foobar, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat.