Preparing old collection of books for new reader?

[marp68]

Don't know if this post should be in the Calibre or Kobo category...

Bought a new Clara HD, since my old Glo HD died suddenly.

After transferring my whole collection of books from Calibre to the Clara reader, I realized that there are a few things that are strange and I need help to get right.

-All books are considered unread on the reader. So how can I set all of them to be Unread? In Calibre I can mark them all and change the Percentage Read. But how do I transfer it to the reader?

-I have a lot of annotations from the books that are visible in Calibre. Is there a way to transfer them to the reader?

Is there nything else I should think about when transferring an old collection of books to a new reader?

Thanks in advance

[PeterT]

Kobo utilities plugin for calibre has the ability to both store and restore reading status

[marp68]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Kobo utilities plugin for calibre has the ability to both store and restore reading status

Thanks, I have that added to Calibre and the books have their status, But the restore option is grey, so I can't use it.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by marp68

Thanks, I have that added to Calibre and the books have their status, But the restore option is grey, so I can't use it.

Where is it greyed out? There are radio buttons at the top of the dialog. You need to choose "Restore". That should enable the rest of the options.

[marp68]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Where is it greyed out? There are radio buttons at the top of the dialog. You need to choose "Restore". That should enable the rest of the options.

I thought I should chose the "Change reading status in the device library". But I now found out that I should chose the "Store/restore current bookmark" and do it from that menu.

But what is "Change reading status in the device library" then? And why is it grey even when the device is connected and I have marked a book I want to change?

[marp68]

And is there a way to get the annotations back in to the new reader? I can see them in the Annotation column in Calibre.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by marp68

I thought I should chose the "Change reading status in the device library". But I now found out that I should chose the "Store/restore current bookmark" and do it from that menu.

But what is "Change reading status in the device library" then? And why is it grey even when the device is connected and I have marked a book I want to change?

"Change reading status in the device library" is purely a way to change the status of the books on the device. Some people just want to do this. Plus it was one of the earlier functions in the plugin. It only works from the device list. It is intended to be use when the book on the device isn't in the library.

If you are in the library list, use the "Update metadata in device library". You can uncheck the metadata items and just enable the status options at the bottom. There are reasons in the code for why this is done this way.

The "Store/restore current bookmark" function is to get the status from the device and store it in the library, and, if needed send it back to the device. It won't work if you don't have an appropriate status in the library to send.

Originally Posted by marp68

And is there a way to get the annotations back in to the new reader? I can see them in the Annotation column in Calibre.

No. The Annotations plugin is one way only. It doesn't store enough information about the annotations to be able to restore them properly. This might change with calibre version 5, but, not for a while and not for annotations currently in your calibre library.

[marp68]

Originally Posted by davidfor

"Change reading status in the device library" is purely a way to change the status of the books on the device. Some people just want to do this. Plus it was one of the earlier functions in the plugin. It only works from the device list. It is intended to be use when the book on the device isn't in the library.

Okej, great to know

Originally Posted by davidfor

If you are in the library list, use the "Update metadata in device library". You can uncheck the metadata items and just enable the status options at the bottom. There are reasons in the code for why this is done this way.

Thanks, will have a look

Originally Posted by davidfor

The "Store/restore current bookmark" function is to get the status from the device and store it in the library, and, if needed send it back to the device. It won't work if you don't have an appropriate status in the library to send.

Since I already had the read/unread status in the library, I guess that's why it changed in the new reader then.