Need a little help!

[yankgirl]

I want to share the ebooks I have with my mother-in law while she goes through chemo treatments. We are sharing through dropbox.

When I load my books in calibre, it creates a folder for each author but then another folder for each title. Is there anyway to skip the title folder and just have each author folder have just the actual ebook?

I hope that makes sense! All I want is all my titles put in folders by author

Thanks!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by yankgirl

I want to share the ebooks I have with my mother-in law while she goes through chemo treatments. We are sharing through dropbox.

When I load my books in calibre, it creates a folder for each author but then another folder for each title. Is there anyway to skip the title folder and just have each author folder have just the actual ebook?

I hope that makes sense! All I want is all my titles put in folders by author

Thanks!

IMHO Don't use your Library that way

Set a Save to disk template, like : {authors}/{title}

and SAVE the (selected) books to the shared folder and keep your real library safe on your local PC.

[yankgirl]

Originally Posted by theducks

IMHO Don't use your Library that way

Set a Save to disk template, like : {authors}/{title}

and SAVE the (selected) books to the shared folder and keep your real library safe on your local PC.

I'm so confused about everything you just said! .

Why do you say don't use my library that way? I already have all my books backed up on a thumb drive if that's what you mean (actually 2 because I tend to lose things)

I'm just trying to find an easier way to share my books with my MIL. She's been reading the books from her iPad and understands how to use the dropbox app. - She's totally computer illiterate (she's googled bing because she didn't know that you can just type www.blahblah at the top of the page)

So the easier for her the better. I've only used calibre to convert formats. I really have no clue about anything else. I just want my folder to go by author and then have each book file in that file, not file in file.

Thanks!

[SquiddOhio]

I agree. Never alter the file structure that Calibre creates and uses.
If you really know what you are doing with your file manager, you can go in and copy the book files to another place on your drive and arrange them any way you want. Safer yet is to "Copy to File" which tells Calibre to copy the book files to another location on your disc. This prevents any accidents from happening should you go into the Calibre Library itself, which you should regard as sacrosanct.
I think, as the poster above notes, that there is a way to direct calibre to create the folder structure you want in the export (I've never done that), but either way, never change the Calibre folders yourself (because they are indexed for speed to allow Calibre to open quickly even with thousands of books and folders, and if you change the folders, the actual files will not be in sync with the index file, and Calibre will get lost - you do not want that to happen).

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by yankgirl

I'm so confused about everything you just said! .

It sounds as if you are trying to share the books stored in your Calibre library directly? If so you cannot change the naming system used.

What is being suggested is that instead you use the Calibre Save to Disk facility to export the books to be shared from Calibre to a folder on Dropbox external to the Calibre library. When using Save to Disk there is a template you can set under Preferences to specify what folder/filename format should be used for the saved books so you can set the names to be structured how you want them.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by yankgirl

I want to share the ebooks I have with my mother-in law while she goes through chemo treatments. We are sharing through dropbox.

When I load my books in calibre, it creates a folder for each author but then another folder for each title. Is there anyway to skip the title folder and just have each author folder have just the actual ebook?

I hope that makes sense! All I want is all my titles put in folders by author

Thanks!

@yankgirl - As you have probably gathered from prior posts you cant do what you want (only have author folders) by synching your calibre folders to dropbox. As well as having a folder structure you don't want, that approach also puts files on drop box that your MIL doesn't need at her iPad.

So... you are going to have to create a separate folder on your machine that you synch to dropbox for your MIL.

You may need to adjust the Save to Disk settings in Preferences - the main one being the Template - see first attachment, I highlighted the settings you may want to adjust (main one being Template)

Second attachment is some selected books on which I pressed 'S', third is the resultant folders.

You would then put the folder on dropbox.

Now the problem is how to keep that folder 'up to date' with new books. The tags in the second attachment should give you clue as to how I do something similar.

1. When I Add a book I decide if its something Viry would want to read, if it is I Tag it as 4ViryNotUpd.
2. Periodically I do a search for books tagged 4ViryNotUpd and save them to the ebooks4Viry folder
3. I also create a text catalogue for those books that I subsequently paste into an email to Viry to inform her of what I added to the ebooks4Viry folder.
4. Then I remove the tag 4ViryNotUpd and add the tag 4ViryUpd

Hopes this helps - courage to your MIL

BR