Files corrupted because they were renamed

[Dullahir]

Hey guys,
Really odd issue, and I'm wondering if anyone has run into this before.

So before I transferred these ebooks to my external hard drive for storage, I renamed them, using the 'Save Books' template: Author - Series Name # - Title.

After doing so, and trying to move them back to Calibre at a later time, (using the most recent version, by the way), EVERY SINGLE FILE is now corrupt. I can tell because the covers are missing. The whole 'Not a Valid Zip' for my epubs is also a dead giveaway.

Why is this odd? Because the only corrupted files are the ones I saved with the aforementioned template.

My guess? The added hyphen in the title is causing some issues.

Here are two examples of corrupted files:

Title: Ambrose Ibsen - House of Souls 01
Author: The House of Long Shadows
(For some reason, that was the name of the file when added to calibre)

Title: Alan Baker -
Author: Dyatlov Pass

(This shows up as Alan Baker - - Dyatlov Pass.epub in the file explorer)

Am I crazy to think that those hyphens are causing some issues? Because I'm currently looking at 318 files that I can no longer use.

Would turning off 'Read metadata from file contents rather than file name' have made a difference? Because to me, it seems like that's exactly why the ebooks imported with the author name and series in the Title field and the Title in the Author Field in the first place.

[Fithaly]

Wow, that sounds tough! Renaming files can mess things up sometimes. The hyphens might be causing the trouble, like mixing up the title and author. Turning off 'Read metadata from file contents rather than file name' might help next time. It's not crazy to think those hyphens are causing issues, especially if they're making the files act weird.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Dullahir

Would turning off 'Read metadata from file contents rather than file name' have made a difference? Because to me, it seems like that's exactly why the ebooks imported with the author name and series in the Title field and the Title in the Author Field in the first place.

If 'Read metadata from file contents rather than file name **' is unchecked the metadata will be extracted from the file name according to what is specified in Configure metadata from file name->Regular expression

** IM(long held)O that would be better expressed as two radio buttons

Read metadata from: File content ◉ File name ◎

And which OS are you using, if it's MacOS you should know that it is addicted to unpacking EPUBs into folders with the extension epub.

BR

[rantanplan]

If the files show "not a valid zip", have you tried opening the file with your favorite archive tool? Like 7zip? Because if the files are actually corrupted, you cannot save them by ignoring metadata, they are broken.

[theducks]

Not a valid Zip is a Damaged file (probably missing a block ore more).
The name issue, in this case is a red herring.

[kovidgoyal]

I highly doubt that the filename containing hyphens could cause file corruption. This should be easy to test however. Statr with a new book that you open and verify is not corrupted, then save it using your suspect template and see what happens.