Windows to Mac - now I can't read my library

[petel33]

Anyone able to help here? I just replaced my Windows machine with a Mac and downloaded the appropriate Calibre. Now almost every single book will not open as it's DRM protected - not I problem I had with Windows. For sure, I had a few books downloaded from the usenet but these opened no problem before, and even the ones I have legally bought from Amazon and uploaded from my Kindle will not open in Calibre.
Is this an Apple specific problem or is it a question of tweaking?

[meeera]

What's the exact error message? Could you have a permissions problem that needs fixing?

Someone who knows a lot more about Calibre than me may be along presently.

(Also it's best not to ask for help with your pirated books here. It'll get you banned quick smart, and even if it doesn't, it will definitely affect how motivated some (most?) people are to help you with issues.)

(Lastly this should probably be in the Calibre forum, not General Discussions. Which may also affect whether qualified-to-answer people will even see your post in the first place.)

[Dr. Drib]

Welcome to Mobileread.

The GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM, as stated, concerns itself with "General discussions about e-book reading not specific to a device, software or format."

Since you are having some kind of difficulty involving calibre, then the logical place to post would be the CALIBRE FORUM, where your thread will now be moved.

Please take the time now to read our Posting Guidelines and look over our site.

Be advised (if this applies): Asking for help with pirated ebooks will get you banned from our site.



Don
(Moderator)

[cybmole]

at a guess, it is not actually a Calibre issue.

your previous PC probably had an adobe ID - that is the key needed for opening any DRM protected epub. you would have gotten a key ( just an email address known to adobe) at some point, and thus "activated" it as a one off operation in the distant past.

your new mac needs to be "activated" with the same adobe key. which should be quick & easy ( unless you need a lost password - in which case there will be a password reset service at adobe.com).

if you've forgotten that email address , then it gets harder, the answer is probably stashed somewhere in the windows registry, but hopefully it will not come to that. your epub e-reader may display it for you somewhere it in ts menu options.

on a new windows PC I would install Adobe Digital Editions and it would walk me through the activation process. I assume something similar happens with a MAC.

your reader devices will have gotten their adobe "key" from the PC when first connected so they should still be OK

NB simply buying a book and adding it to (vanilla) calibre does not change the book's DRM status in any way. so if they were readable on your old PC then you must have had a valid key.

if your issue is with amazon books, not with epub, then please clarify, that's an easy fix also.

[petel33]

ok, thanks for the replies. Any books I got from the usenet I'm not bothered about and I'm more concerned about those that I have legitimately bought - which are the vast majority- but I take on board the advice about pirated books for the future. I think perhaps the answer by cybmole is relevant, I'm very new to the mac so I'll need to explore further, but even uploading a legitimately purchased book from my kindle to calibre on the mac results in a DRM locked message coming up when trying to view it.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by petel33

but even uploading a legitimately purchased book from my kindle to calibre on the mac results in a DRM locked message coming up when trying to view it.

This is expected behaviour as the book is almost certainly DRM locked so that it can only be read on a specific Kindle.

If you want to look into removing DRM protection from your books when they are added to your Calibre library so that you can read them on other devices then googling for "Apprentice Alf" might help.

[cybmole]

because you can't move Kindle books like that. they are delivered to a device for use only on that specific device. so a book delivered to your actual kindle cannot be sideloaded to & read on your mac. Once again this is nothing to do with calibre though.

what you must do for your previously bought amazon books is install kindle for Mac, register it to your amazon account, download the books to your mac using that software. You can then place a copy of that in calibre, but that will not de-drm it unless you install extra plugins. calibre will by default call the amazon software as a viewer if you then open the book in calibre, so that will then work.
the mac copy is then licenced to be read on the mac, & only there, if you were to sideload THAT copy to a kindle it would be locked.

most foks who buy books + use calibre as their main library do de-drm after purchase, as that prevents all these new hardware-> new problems scenarios.

if you don't de-drm, you have no obvious way in calibre of knowing what device it is licenced for, unless you make custom columns. So wanting both the "licenced only for kindle" and the "licenced only for mac" copies both in calibre with same title, author etc will be confusing.

[cybmole]

Ps. there is another advantage of de-drm ing and adding to calibre:

the various kindle for xxx apps can only see books in a single amazon account., if like me, you've bought books from more than one amazon account in your lifetime, and want to view + read/ manage them all as a single collection, then...

you can change accounts in the various aps, via unregister, reregister, but once you enter the Kindle fire tablet world, all your tablet apps are also linked to a single account so changing the kindle fire registration in order to access some old book has consequences.
The fire does not allow, AFAIK, you to say: give me my apps etc bought for account A but give me access to my books bought from account B

[meeera]

While you look into the DeDRM tools, to exclude other issues download a couple known good DRM-free books such as those from the Mobileread Library. See if they work.


Your wording in the original question implied to me that you had a pile of books in a Calibre library on Windows that you had already ensured were freed from their DRM. And that something had gone wrong in the migration of your existing, no-DRM Calibre Library from Windows to Mac. Was that the case, or not? If so, can you please detail exactly how you performed the library migration? And go back to my first question, which you ignored - what is the EXACT error message you received?