[Solved] All book dates the same date after update to 6.6.1

[CaptainTivo]

Hello all,
I have been using Calibre since I got my first Kindle in 2010 and have been very happy with it.

I just updated calibre to version 6.6.1 on Windows 10 and suddenly all my books have the same "date". That is, the Date column (which is the "timestamp" in the database) has always shown the date of the original ebook file when I imported it into Calibre. Now all books show the same date, which is weirdly, September 27 2022, even though I updated today, September 30, 2022. I checked the files by doing "open containing folder" and the original files still have the acquired them onto the computer, so Calibre did not change the date on the windows file (by, for instance, writing to it).

Questions:
1. So what happened?
2. Is there any way to get back the old behavior?
3. Is it possible to "downgrade" back to an earlier version of Calibre? I never did that before because I never had any trouble with an update before.

Thanks for any help.

[ownedbycats]

That's odd.

Just to double-check, you sure you're not looking at Modified (last_modified)? This one is far more easily changable and I've seen certain actions modify it for every book.

If not, have you done any bulk metadata editors recently (specifically on the 27th?). I've had one or two mishaps by accidentally checking a column I did not mean to.

[enuddleyarbl]

Definitely odd. I loaded up 6.6.1 early this morning and all my dates look fine. I've got Date (date), Published (pubdate), Modified (last_modified) and various custom date fields. They all seem fine.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by CaptainTivo

...

Questions:
1. So what happened?

No idea, I just added a couple of 'books' to a libray and all Dates intact



Perhaps you selected all books and did something like this:

Originally Posted by CaptainTivo

2. Is there any way to get back the old behavior?

Given how easy it is for the user to change the Date values in all books, I question your assumption that 'calibre' did it

Do you have a backup of the library prior to Sep 27?

Originally Posted by CaptainTivo

3. Is it possible to "downgrade" back to an earlier version of Calibre? I never did that before because I never had any trouble with an update before.

Yep, there's a "Previous releases of calibre are available here." link on the platform download pages. Remove the existing install, and install the old version - you won't lose any settings, plugins etc, and the library will remain as is.

But I don't see the point of doing that. Something happened on the 27th of September, not today. If you alter the display format for Date (there's Tweak to do that) to show the Time it might give you a clue as to what happened - e.g. that was about when the cat jumped on the keyboard

BR

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Given how easy it is for the user to change the Date values in all books, I question your assumption that 'calibre' did it

If it was the upgrade triggering some sort of incredibly rare underlying db glitch, I'd expect it to change to today's date. So I'm inclined to think a user error.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

If it was the upgrade triggering some sort of incredibly rare underlying db glitch, I'd expect it to change to today's date. So I'm inclined to think a user error.

Yeah, the calendar widget lands on the current date, I changed it to the Sep 29 before I took the screenshot.

BR

[theducks]

6.6.1 all my date (type) columns look normal.
FWIW I do not repurpose any standard columns. Did you do something else at the same time as the update? All I can figure is you had something incorrectly configured that stomped on {date}

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

But I don't see the point of doing that. Something happened on the 27th of September, not today. If you alter the display format for Date (there's Tweak to do that) to show the Time it might give you a clue as to what happened - e.g. that was about when the cat jumped on the keyboard

BR

Hovering over the field in the book list will also display the full datetime in a tooltip. This also works for any datetime field.

[CaptainTivo]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

That's odd.

Just to double-check, you sure you're not looking at Modified (last_modified)? This one is far more easily changable and I've seen certain actions modify it for every book.

If not, have you done any bulk metadata editors recently (specifically on the 27th?). I've had one or two mishaps by accidentally checking a column I did not mean to.

No. Modified date shows 30 Sept 2022. On that day (before I updated to 6.6.1) I selected all books and deleted a bunch of random, non-standard TAGS using the bulk Edit Metadata function. I guess I did not know that this would change the modified date, but I don't really care. It's the "Date" column that changed.

[CaptainTivo]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

No idea, I just added a couple of 'books' to a libray and all Dates intact

Attachment 196887

Perhaps you selected all books and did something like this:

Attachment 196888


Given how easy it is for the user to change the Date values in all books, I question your assumption that 'calibre' did it

Do you have a backup of the library prior to Sep 27?


Yep, there's a "Previous releases of calibre are available here." link on the platform download pages. Remove the existing install, and install the old version - you won't lose any settings, plugins etc, and the library will remain as is.

But I don't see the point of doing that. Something happened on the 27th of September, not today. If you alter the display format for Date (there's Tweak to do that) to show the Time it might give you a clue as to what happened - e.g. that was about when the cat jumped on the keyboard

BR

OK. I DID not a massive "bulk Edit Metadata" to remove a huge number of non-standard Tags that came with some books I added. I IS possible that I inadvertently checked the "Apply date" box. The only thing wrong with this theory is that I did the bulk edit on the 30th. That would mean that not only did I check the "Apply date" box but also selected that date in the calendar. Still, this is the most likely cause given that this has not been reported as a bug by anyone else.

Now the question is: can it be reversed? Unfortunately, I don't do backups of the Calibre database (indeed, I did not even know about that function). I do have daily backups of my entire system, so I have access to any data on my machine for any date. Is it possible to manually find the database file in my backups and replace the current database with that?

BTW, thanks to all the people who replied. I did not know that the Calibre community was so wide and active.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by CaptainTivo

I do have daily backups of my entire system, so I have access to any data on my machine for any date. Is it possible to manually find the database file in my backups and replace the current database with that?

The best approach would be to restore the entire calibre library folder from your backup. Restoring only the database will probably lead to inconsistencies between what the database thinks is in the library and what files are really there. The database is inside the calibre library folder.

You could try restoring just the db and see what happens. The database is named "metadata.db" and located just inside your calibre library folder. If you do this then you should immediately run calibre's check library function (in Library maintenance) to see if the library is unacceptably out of sync.

Finally and depending on what you did, you might want to restore the calibre configuration folder as well. You can find where it is by running calibre, going to Preferences / Miscellaneous and choosing Open configuration folder.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Hovering over the field in the book list will also display the full datetime in a tooltip. This also works for any datetime field.

@obc - Book list tooltips can be turned off, not sure what the default is, but I have it off.

To change the Date to Today in Bulk MDE all you have to do os tap Alt+P a couple of times followed by a space.

perhaps the fields that have been changed could be highlighted, viz:



BR

[CaptainTivo]

Originally Posted by chaley

The best approach would be to restore the entire calibre library folder from your backup. Restoring only the database will probably lead to inconsistencies between what the database thinks is in the library and what files are really there. The database is inside the calibre library folder.

You could try restoring just the db and see what happens. The database is named "metadata.db" and located just inside your calibre library folder. If you do this then you should immediately run calibre's check library function (in Library maintenance) to see if the library is unacceptably out of sync.

Finally and depending on what you did, you might want to restore the calibre configuration folder as well. You can find where it is by running calibre, going to Preferences / Miscellaneous and choosing Open configuration folder.

So I restored the metadata.db file from the day before I did the bulk metadata edit and the "date" field is now back to what it was.
I conclude that I must have inadvertently set the date on all books when I was cleaning up the tags fields.

Thanks for all the help.
BTW, I don't see any way to edit the thread title to indicate a solved problem such as is done in other forums.

[ownedbycats]

It's easy to do.

You can't edit a title after the thread's posted except in the first few minutes. You can use the '!' button in the user profile (next to Karma) to request a thread title change though.

[Quoth]

Editing a tag case (and some other columns) on one book will put "now" as the date not just on that book but every book that uses that "global" data . It's because the tag is only stored once and a case change isn't regarded as a new tag/data.