Books don't have available format?

[Mya09]

Hi, I hope I'm posting this in the correct place and that someone can help me...

I currently have a around 500 books in my library, complete with +200 tags so that I can access the correct books easily. But I can't open any of the books. Calibre keeps saying that none of the books have an available format.

I could go to MetaData and add the epub to the book again for every book manually. But this costs a lot of time, and some of the covers don't come back if I do that.

Is there an easy way to get all the 'formats' back with the books, without losing all my tags? I'd hate to have to put all the tags back on the books again.

Thanks for your time! And thanks in advance for any help!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Mya09

Hi, I hope I'm posting this in the correct place and that someone can help me...

I currently have a around 500 books in my library, complete with +200 tags so that I can access the correct books easily. But I can't open any of the books. Calibre keeps saying that none of the books have an available format.

I could go to MetaData and add the epub to the book again for every book manually. But this costs a lot of time, and some of the covers don't come back if I do that.

Is there an easy way to get all the 'formats' back with the books, without losing all my tags? I'd hate to have to put all the tags back on the books again.

Thanks for your time! And thanks in advance for any help!

Are you messing around inside the Library folder after you add books? The GUI and the library folder names are tightly linked (as in 100%). Any change breaks the linkage. You might be able to salvage your library using the Fix section of the Quality check Plugin

Did you play around with Preferences: Behaviour?

Run both parts of Library: Maintenance: Check Library and see what errors that reports

[Adoby]

You may have a corrupt calibre library. The paths to the books have changed for some reason, most likely because of something you did. Possible causes might be that you have used some incompatible cloud service or copied the library between different operating systems or filesystems that are incompatible and cause minor changes to the paths.

I would recommend that you make a backup of the library and then try to run the library maintenence functions. With some luck calibre will be able to fix the problems for you.

http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/gui.html#library

Edit: What theducks said...

[itimpi]

Another point to OP - you have not by any chance tried to store your Calibre library under Google Drive?

Calibre is not compatible with Google Drive. This would cause the symptoms you describe because Google Drive will silently break a Calibre library by renaming the folders in Calibre file store.

If this is the case, then if you search the forum then someone has written a utility that can rename such folders back to the correct names that Calibre expects.

[Mya09]

I did not change anything in the Library folder, as far as I can remember. but i work on a shared computer. Maybe my room mate did something, but i'm guessing that she didn't.

I tried the Fix section of the Quality Check Plugin, but the plugin says that 'all book sizes are correct.'

I didn't touch anything inside Preferences: Behaviour.

I ran Library:Maintenance: Check Library. There are no errors in my library. And also no errors in the database. Should I run Library:Maintenance:Restore Database too?

Thanks all of you for the quick replies and the help!!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Mya09

I did not change anything in the Library folder, as far as I can remember. but i work on a shared computer. Maybe my room mate did something, but i'm guessing that she didn't.

I tried the Fix section of the Quality Check Plugin, but the plugin says that 'all book sizes are correct.'


I ran Library:Maintenance: Check Library. There are no errors in my library. And also no errors in the database. Should I run Library:Maintenance:Restore Database too?

Thanks all of you for the quick replies and the help!!

Well, that (fix) sort of implies that the books Calibre THINKS it has, matches what it found.

I suggest that you DO NOT run restore

In the Tag Browser: Expand Formats (if collapsed)
There should be a (summary)list of the available formats. Each format has a number in square brackets: [42] EPUB next to it
do those counts look reasonable?

No Available formats says 'The device' is not configured/allowed to use any format that you currently have for the book.
1) the message is correct
2) The device allowed formats setting is wrong/damaged.
3) You have more than 1 device attached and that is confusing Calibre (the message in the lower Left names the device attached)
4) other

[Mya09]

Formats gives me a pretty unreasonable number. It says [4] EPUB, and that's it..

But if there is no other way, I'll manually attach the files again. That's easier than resisting my whole library and losing all my tags and stuff.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Mya09

Formats gives me a pretty unreasonable number. It says [4] EPUB, and that's it..

But if there is no other way, I'll manually attach the files again. That's easier than resisting my whole library and losing all my tags and stuff.

The check must agree with that or you would have gotten errors:
Extra formats or Missing formats

Caution: change nothing: Peeking is OK
Open the Library folder with Explorer.
You should see folders for Each Author
Inside the Author Folders you should see a: <book title> (##) folder
Inside that folder you will see 3 or more files for books WITH formats: cover.jpg, metadata.opf, <book-author>.EPUB or other format

If you see the first 2 files only, this is 'an Empty Book' (metadata and cover only)

See the numbers in Green above. This is the part that GoogleDrive destroys.

Something is deleting format files. Rogue Sync software? Putting the Library on a Network Drive.