Calibre Transfer

[davecabezo]

I have a 1st generation Kindle and I'm wanting to transfer book to it from Calibre but I want the books transferred in the same order as they are in calibre.
In Calibre I added another field and added numbers into it next to each entry so that I could sort the books.

However when I transfer the books they don't stay in the order that they were in Calibre.

How can I get the transfer to keep the same book order

Regards

Dave

[Lizj1]

I think you would have to use a plugboard to prepend your number into the Title field. Kindle will only sort by Author, Title, or Recent (which changes every time you open a book)

Liz

[davecabezo]

Hi Liz

Thanks for the reply but I'm not sure what you mean by Plugboard
If the kindle will only sort by Author, Title or Recent it probably wont be any good just putting a number in front of the Title, or would it?

[Lizj1]

Dave,
Kindle sorts by the Title FIELD, so if that field starts with a number, it will sort by that number. You could do that manually in Calibre, but most people seem to use the plugboard facility - this adjusts the metadata as the book is downloaded, according to rules you set.

I haven't experimented with it myself so you would have to search the help for info about plugboards. (or just jump right in in the settings and see what works)

Good Luck,
Liz

[dwig]

Originally Posted by davecabezo

... I'm not sure what you mean by Plugboard
If the kindle will only sort by Author, Title or Recent it probably wont be any good just putting a number in front of the Title, or would it?

Plugboards are reprocessing instructions that calibre uses when exporting files (Send to Device, Save to Disk, ...). They are setup in Preferences on the "Metadata Plugboards" panel.

If you prepend the number to the title using a plugboard you Kindle will see that as part of the title and it will affect the order the Kindle display when sorting by Title. Instead of the title of a book on the Kindle being, say, "The Call of the Wild", it will become something like "043 The Call of the Wild".

[davecabezo]

Hi
I found a very good tutorial on the "How to Geek" website. I followed the tutorial and used Tana French series, it worked fine but the books were produced on the Kindle last to 1st!
I then tried the same template for Alex Grey but they were just produced on the Kindle in the same haphazard way they are in Calibre!
What could have gone wrong??

Dave

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by davecabezo

Hi
I found a very good tutorial on the "How to Geek" website. I followed the tutorial and used Tana French series, it worked fine but the books were produced on the Kindle last to 1st!
I then tried the same template for Alex Grey but they were just produced on the Kindle in the same haphazard way they are in Calibre!
What could have gone wrong??

Dave

You either use an incorrect plugboard, or you entered the data wrong. It would help if you could post the resulting titles that you are seeing on your Kindle and the plugboard rule. I am using:

{series:|| }{series_index:0>2s|[|] - }{title}

and destination in "title" which works fine.

[davecabezo]

Many Thanks for the reply, the plugboard rule I used was
{series:?? }{series_index:0>2s/[/] }{title}
Which is slightly different to your example.
The series I tried it on was Alex Gray's Detective Lorimer.
I'm not sure what you mean by "and destination in "title" which works fine"

Dave

[davecabezo]

Tried again after deleting all the books in Alex Gray folder on the Kindle, then I checked in the plugboard in preferences and the formula had changed from your example to the formula I posted above with ?? etc.
The transfer did not put the books in order!!
BTW my Kindle is the oldest model but it's shown in the plugboard as Kindle2

[DuckieTigger]

When you make a plugboard rule you need to tell it what data you want to replace. You could change the author instead of the title, for example. The destination drop down on the right tells it which data to replace - default is title, I believe.

If you can, please write down the resulting titles as they appear on your kindle (or attach a picture). And try changing the sort order - it may still be in "recent" instead of author or title.

[davecabezo]

I tried changing the plugboard from "title" to "title sort" but it made no difference. Below are the photo's of my Kindle screen with sort and title sort in the destination field.
I have also taken a photo of the plugboard showing the template screen

Sorry but mobile read could not let me upload any file

Will try Later

Dave

[davecabezo]

At last I've managed to upload the files

Dave

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by davecabezo

At last I've managed to upload the files

Dave

Aye, looks like you are missing information. Would need to see your series information. If you right click on "title" or "author" tabs at the top, you can show the column "series". That is the one that needs to have your information about which series you are having and which book you are having.

Here is a screenshot from my calibre and the metadata open for the first book. Please note how my calibre is showing the series and number, and how it looks in the metadata window of the book. If you created a custom colum for your order, then the plugboard you used is not going to work correctly.

I will make a new post in a bit showing how it will end up on my Kindle after the books are transfered.

[DuckieTigger]

... And this is how it looks like after it has been transfered via Calibre.

[DuckieTigger]

Another thing - calibre will NOT show how the titles look like on the Kindle, unfortunately. At first I thought you posted the same picture twice. If you switch from library to device view, you will not see the titles that calibre changed.