Force Deletion of Certain Metadata Fields

Jaws · 09-11-2018, 01:07 AM

Is there a way to force one or more (specific) metadata fields to be blanked/deleted on adding a book to the library? For example, when I'm adding a book, I do NOT want someone else's/some ebook store's star rating or tags at all. As it is, I manually delete these fields every time... which is a pain when adding a boatload of books at once, since there's no batch-process way that I've found (and I'm not suggesting that would be a good idea!). The same goes for the date (of adding) field.

Instead, a tweak/preference that substitutes a null set for a field on addition of a book would be great. So would any other method that just trashes metadata that is far more often misleading (for my uses) than helpful.

kovidgoyal · 09-11-2018, 01:22 AM

Simply select all the added books, click edit metadata which will open the bulk metadata edit dialog and change the values of whatever fields you want.

BetterRed · 09-11-2018, 01:47 AM

You can Mark books when they are added, there's a setting in Add Books. After adding a "boatload of books", show all Marked books and do what Kovid suggests.

The Marks (push pins on left edge of book list) don't persist, i.e. they will disappear on exit, restart, or a library switch. You may need to add the Mark Books tool to a toolbar/menu, there are kb shortcuts too.

BR

sdfg · 10-19-2018, 06:22 PM

Seconded for automation of this. I've got it set up to remove tags, but the rest of the cruft I'd like to go too (synopsis, publisher, rating etc). Yes it can be done manually, but that gets old very quickly.

09-11-2018, 01:07 AM	#1
Jaws JCL Punch-Card Collector Posts: 90 Karma: 34468 Join Date: Jun 2014 Location: Antarctica Device: Aggressively Device Independent	Force Deletion of Certain Metadata Fields Is there a way to force one or more (specific) metadata fields to be blanked/deleted on adding a book to the library? For example, when I'm adding a book, I do NOT want someone else's/some ebook store's star rating or tags at all. As it is, I manually delete these fields every time... which is a pain when adding a boatload of books at once, since there's no batch-process way that I've found (and I'm not suggesting that would be a good idea!). The same goes for the date (of adding) field. Instead, a tweak/preference that substitutes a null set for a field on addition of a book would be great. So would any other method that just trashes metadata that is far more often misleading (for my uses) than helpful.

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09-11-2018, 01:22 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,664 Karma: 28549046 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Simply select all the added books, click edit metadata which will open the bulk metadata edit dialog and change the values of whatever fields you want.

09-11-2018, 01:47 AM	#3
BetterRed null operator (he/him) Posts: 22,046 Karma: 30277960 Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Sydney Australia Device: none	You can Mark books when they are added, there's a setting in Add Books. After adding a "boatload of books", show all Marked books and do what Kovid suggests. The Marks (push pins on left edge of book list) don't persist, i.e. they will disappear on exit, restart, or a library switch. You may need to add the Mark Books tool to a toolbar/menu, there are kb shortcuts too. BR

10-19-2018, 06:22 PM	#4
sdfg Member Posts: 14 Karma: 7398 Join Date: Feb 2015 Device: none	Seconded for automation of this. I've got it set up to remove tags, but the rest of the cruft I'd like to go too (synopsis, publisher, rating etc). Yes it can be done manually, but that gets old very quickly.

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