Aura HD Aura HD can't see books added from Calibre

[mazaya]

I have a few books on Caliber that I am trying to send over to my Kobo Aura HD. It's my first time attempting this, I had no problem adding books from the Kobo Desktop. I feel this should be really simple but somehow it's not working.

Here are the steps that I tried:
1. I open Calibre see books in my Calibre Library that I want to transfer.
2. I plug in my Kobo and I am asked if I want to connect to my computer, I click 'Connect'
3. The device is detected by my computer and also appears on Calibre.
4. I right-click on the book that I want to send from my Calibre library to my Kobo and choose Send to device > Send to main memory (the other memory options are grayed out because I don't use an external SD card)
5. When I click on 'My device' in Calibre, I see the new book I added
6. I eject my Kobo from Calibre and unplug it from my computer
7. I turn on my Kobo and look under Library but I see only the books I transferred from Kobo Desktop.

When I look under Computer > KOBOeReader, I see folders named after the author. Inside those folders are the epub files.
When I look under Computer > KOBOeReader > .kobo > kepub, I think I found the books that I purchased from Kobo Desktop. I tried copy/pasting the epub files in there but my Kobo still doesn't see it.

I read a few threads about people who had the same problem with different Kobo eReaders but it looks like their solutions don't work for me or I'm not doing it right.

If someone could explain simply how to fix this problem, I would really appreciate it.

When you right click on the book, try selecting "Send to Device > Send Specific Format to ..." and ensure you're sending it as ePub. If it works, then you can tweak Calibre's settings to make ePub the default.

Also ensure that you're not sending DRMed books through Calibre. I'm not sure how the Aura will respond in that case.

[rayhigh]

After you eject and unplug the Aura, you should see a "processing" dialog on the Aura screen. Sometimes it takes up to 30 seconds for this dialog to begin. When it is complete, your aura will be "on" and the books you added should be displayed on the main screen.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by mazaya

I have a few books on Caliber that I am trying to send over to my Kobo Aura HD. It's my first time attempting this, I had no problem adding books from the Kobo Desktop. I feel this should be really simple but somehow it's not working.

Here are the steps that I tried:
1. I open Calibre see books in my Calibre Library that I want to transfer.
2. I plug in my Kobo and I am asked if I want to connect to my computer, I click 'Connect'
3. The device is detected by my computer and also appears on Calibre.
4. I right-click on the book that I want to send from my Calibre library to my Kobo and choose Send to device > Send to main memory (the other memory options are grayed out because I don't use an external SD card)
5. When I click on 'My device' in Calibre, I see the new book I added
6. I eject my Kobo from Calibre and unplug it from my computer
7. I turn on my Kobo and look under Library but I see only the books I transferred from Kobo Desktop.

All that is what you should do and should work.

When I look under Computer > KOBOeReader, I see folders named after the author. Inside those folders are the epub files.

That proves the calibre is putting them onto the device correctly.

When I look under Computer > KOBOeReader > .kobo > kepub, I think I found the books that I purchased from Kobo Desktop. I tried copy/pasting the epub files in there but my Kobo still doesn't see it.

That is correct. And the device does not look inside the .kobo directory for sideloaded books.

I read a few threads about people who had the same problem with different Kobo eReaders but it looks like their solutions don't work for me or I'm not doing it right.

If someone could explain simply how to fix this problem, I would really appreciate it.

This usually means there is something wrong with one or more of the epubs. When it sees new books, the device processes them and adds them to the internal database. This is used for the library lists you see when using it. But, if the book has some sort of error in it, this can prevent the processing of that book. And, it prevents any other new book from being processed correctly.

The thing to do now is to remove those books from the device, and then send one or two other books. See if those get processed correctly. If they do, we can look at the others and see what went wrong.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Also ensure that you're not sending DRMed books through Calibre. I'm not sure how the Aura will respond in that case.

Actually, I did this for the first time over the weekend, and it worked. But, the device has to be authorised and the book has to be for the same user. If that isn't the case, the book will get added, but opening will display a DRM error message.

[mazaya]

Thank you BWinmill! That worked! I knew it was something easy but I'm just not familiar enough with either the Kobo or Calibre to figure it out by myself.

Thank you so much for your help! I just wish I'd asked sooner... I wasted a good 2-3 hours of reading trying to solve this.

Something similar happened to me. Transferred books to Aura via Calibre, everything looked OK, little green ticks in the 'books on device' column and all that.

Disconnected, waited for it to process them, or shelve them, or whatever it does. Everything looked good.

Then when the Aura returned to the usual home screen, guess what... no books! I looked in the library just to make sure, and the only books in it were the icons for the non-downloaded ones I've bought from Kobo over the years.

So I plugged the Aura back in, connected it, and went back to Calibre, which - again - told me that the books were on the Aura.

So I disconnected it again.

And... guess what? The books had appeared right where they were supposed to be.

This has happened a couple of times; it's really quite weird.

The point to this, I suppose, is that I'm just saying that if your books are supposed to be on the Aura and don't seem to be, then don't panic immediately. Reconnect and disconnect again and see what happens rather than doing anything complicated and difficult first off.

If that doesn't work, then it's OK to panic.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Jen_Smith

Something similar happened to me. Transferred books to Aura via Calibre, everything looked OK, little green ticks in the 'books on device' column and all that.

Disconnected, waited for it to process them, or shelve them, or whatever it does. Everything looked good.

Then when the Aura returned to the usual home screen, guess what... no books! I looked in the library just to make sure, and the only books in it were the icons for the non-downloaded ones I've bought from Kobo over the years.

So I plugged the Aura back in, connected it, and went back to Calibre, which - again - told me that the books were on the Aura.

Just to explain what is happening from the calibre side of things.

When calibre sends the books to the device, it records that fact and adds the book to the current "on device" list. It also updates a file on the device with details of the book. When you disconnect, calibre completely forgets this information.

On the next connect, calibre and the Kobo driver reads the database on the device for what books the device knows about. It also reads the file calibre put there for books it knows about. This is used to match between the library and the books on the device. Books that are listed in the file and but are not in the database, will be shown as on the device. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to show the difference.

So I disconnected it again.

And... guess what? The books had appeared right where they were supposed to be.

This has happened a couple of times; it's really quite weird.

The point to this, I suppose, is that I'm just saying that if your books are supposed to be on the Aura and don't seem to be, then don't panic immediately. Reconnect and disconnect again and see what happens rather than doing anything complicated and difficult first off.

If that doesn't work, then it's OK to panic.

I have seen that on a few occasion. Not very often, but enough for me to plug the device back in and check if I did send the book over. Disconnected again and the books were processed. No obvious reason for either occurrence.

[dlovely]

i had the same problems and ended up resetting everything. had the same issue again yesterday and it even said my sideloaded epubs needed to be bought lol (BUY NOW!) so i plugged it back in to the computer and safely ejected the device again which made it work again. not sure why calibre is having issues with the device, never had these problems with my nook or paperwhite.

[taming]

I have not experienced problems with the Aura and calibre except whn the driver version for calibre had not yet caught up with changes on Kobo's end. That has not happened for awhile. I recently was ruinning a different Kobo device--a Kobo WFi--and I forget that I had to use the old driver, which I had disabled.