Global Search and Replace Question

[Joan M]

Copied and pasted all the contents of the calibrebooks folder to a backup folder.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Joan M

Copied and pasted all the contents of the calibrebooks folder to a backup folder.

You can click on down arrow to the right of the library icon and switch to the new location. Select Switch/create library - check top box (Use the previously existing library at the new location) and browse to your backup library by clicking the icon to the right of the New Location bar. This will point calibre to your backup location.

[Joan M]

Thank you.
ETA: Now that I know how to start the car, maybe I should learn how to gas it up. Then perhaps learn to change a flat tire. For now, I'll just drive around and look at the scenery.

[Adoby]

It may be too late now, but...

The authors in calibre are separated with &. There is nothing you can do about that. But you can switch the titles from the author field to the title field, and replace "&" in the titles with ";". Not perfect. And backups are good to make in advance.

1. Add a custom column so you can keep track of the problem books. Perhaps "fixit".
2. Set #fixit to yes for all problem books, and restrict the book list to books to fix.
3. Do a bulk metadata edit to swap author and title fields.
4. Do a bulk metadata edit and search and replace " &" in the titles with ";"
5. Review and remove the custom column "fixit" if all seems fine.

Problems:
If there were some titles that actually had a legit "&" in the title, then that has now changed to ";".

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Adoby

The authors in calibre are separated with &. There is nothing you can do about that.

Good info in the post, but she was trying to replace ; with &, not the other way around.

[Adoby]

Perhaps... My impression was that she did a search and replace on the authors field, but some books had title/author swapped. So titles with ; got a &. And she wanted to fix the titles by changing back the & to ;. But perhaps I am wrong...

[Joan M]

By the way, I've got more than 5700 commas (,) in my Authors fields, almost all of them for LN, FN. Is there a global/bulk way to switch them to FN, LN without doing it on a case by case basis? And of course, by that I mean - is there a way that someone of my limited ability could do so without causing mayhem?

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Joan M

By the way, I've got more than 5700 commas (,) in my Authors fields, almost all of them for LN, FN. Is there a global/bulk way to switch them to FN, LN without doing it on a case by case basis? And of course, by that I mean - is there a way that someone of my limited ability could do so without causing mayhem?

You could do it with global search & replace, but as you said 'without causing mayhem', I suggest the Quality Check plugin :-)

That has a function to do just that.

[Joan M]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

You could do it with global search & replace, but as you said 'without causing mayhem', I suggest the Quality Check plugin :-)

That has a function to do just that.

Indeed, that QC plugin is how I found 'em all. But is there a way to switch them all over to FN, LN. I'm at the moment actually going through one by one and taking care of all the ones that are not instances of only one author.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Joan M

Indeed, that QC plugin is how I found 'em all. But is there a way to switch them all over to FN, LN. I'm at the moment actually going through one by one and taking care of all the ones that are not instances of only one author.

The Fix submenu has an option to swap from LN, FN to FN LN and vice versa.

[Joan M]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

The Fix submenu has an option to swap from LN, FN to FN LN and vice versa.

Duh. Thank you.

[Joan M]

Opened calibre today, got error message:

calibre, version 0.9.19
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>DatabaseException</b>:disk I/O error
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 271, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 166, in get
OperationalError: disk I/O error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\search_box.py", line 433, in do_advanced_search
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\search.py", line 27, in __init__
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database.py", line 1061, in all_authors
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 314, in run
DatabaseException: disk I/O error
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 271, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 166, in get
OperationalError: disk I/O error

I would like to just use calibre to organize my ebooks. Am completely willing to be told it is not the software for me. No hard feelings. Any suggestions on either 1.) what is wrong now or 2.) another software suggestion ?

ETA: when I attempted to re-open calibre, I got the "failed to create" library message, noticed that my E: drive had been kicked off, unplugged/replugged the connection and all appears okay now. I guess.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Joan M

Opened calibre today, got error message:

calibre, version 0.9.19
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>DatabaseException</b>:disk I/O error
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 271, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 166, in get
OperationalError: disk I/O error

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\search_box.py", line 433, in do_advanced_search
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\search.py", line 27, in __init__
File "site-packages\calibre\library\database.py", line 1061, in all_authors
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 314, in run
DatabaseException: disk I/O error
RemoteTraceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 271, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\library\sqlite.py", line 166, in get
OperationalError: disk I/O error

I would like to just use calibre to organize my ebooks. Am completely willing to be told it is not the software for me. No hard feelings. Any suggestions on either 1.) what is wrong now or 2.) another software suggestion ?

I/O error =Input/Output error = I can't read / write to the designated hard drive
This is NOT a Calibre specific problem. You are shooting the messenger

There are many reasons this could show (not all are disasters)
1)Your current logon is not the owner of the Library folder. Easy fix. Logon as the owner/change the 'group' rights to RWX
2) your Library drive is failing
3) you are being blocked by security sowtware

[Joan M]

Originally Posted by theducks

I/O error =Input/Output error = I can't read / write to the designated hard drive
This is NOT a Calibre specific problem. You are shooting the messenger

There are many reasons this could show (not all are disasters)
1)Your current logon is not the owner of the Library folder. Easy fix. Logon as the owner/change the 'group' rights to RWX
2) your Library drive is failing
3) you are being blocked by security sowtware

I don't want to shoot anybody, boss. We might have crossed paths when I added above: "when I attempted to re-open calibre, I got the "failed to create" library message, noticed that my E: drive had been kicked off, unplugged/replugged the connection and all appears okay now. I guess."

This is a different drive than I had been using before and the connections all seemed secure, so I don't know what was up with that.

[Joan M]

But while you're around - I was going to do a global search for "&" and replace with "and" in the titles field and tried to figure out what you meant about using \& \ . Should I just ignore you and use "&"? Cause using \& \ sure didn't work. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.