Save a Life!! Help me with PDF tag question.

Tried really hard to figure out for myself, and search for answers, but am failing badly. In organizing my library (the vast majority epubs), I've got several PDFs that I've (understanding the extreme difficulty of even converting PDF to PDF) used Adobe Pro (File/Properties) to put in my title, author in preferred format ("Last, First") and used the Subject field for my preferred Tag (which is how I organize: WorldLit, Bios, Etc). This has worked well, so that the PDF can be dragged into a new Calibre library and the tag and author name/order is how I want it.

Anyway, I want to change some of the Tags to match some changes I made to the Epubs. For instance, changing "NonFiction.Bios" to "Biographies & Memoirs". Here's where I'm going nuts. While I've changed the Subject field to the new Tag in Adobe, when I drag the updated PDF into a new Library, both the new AND the old tags appear. So, I've also opened the PDF in Notepad+, and found the old tag in there (as a keyword, in the description section near bottom) and deleted. Still the same result, EVEN after uninstalling Calibre and deleting any remnants of it that I could find>> my thinking here is that if the words "NonFiction.Bios" aren't anywhere in the PDFs properties or the file itself, Calibre must be "remembering" something about the PDF, but I can't figure out where.

The bottom line is that I want to have the PDFs in my library be standalone with my title, author and tags, so that the single file can be put in anyone's Calibre library and the Tag will be as I left it (and not need adjusted again in the library).

Hope this makes sense, and imagine I'm just doing something dumb, so quite humbly grateful for anyone's help here! Thank you.

[itimpi]

Kovid has said in the past that reading and updating tags in PDF files seems to be bit hit-and-miss! Maybe you are seeing an example of this happening?

Epub files should have the metadata embedded reliably as long as you have used either 'Polish Books' or the Modify ePub plugin to make sure it has been updated to agree with the Calibre metadata database. Doing a conversion or a 'Save to Disk' will also update the metadata in ePub files.

Thanks.. I've updated the text so it's more clear that I'm only having an issue with PDFs that I want to change the Tag in. Epubs are working great.

[kovidgoyal]

Are you making a new book record or just adding the updated pdf to the old book record. If it is the latter, IIRC tags are appended not ovrwritten. if you wish to overwrite, then you should first delete the existing tags.

I figured it out.. just Another weird Adobe bug. Even though I'd replaced the Tag with the new one (and thus the new one was the only one in the Property/Subject field), the old one was also listed in Calibre. But now (maybe after an Acrobat update>I'd changed the tags a few months ago), if I delete the new tag, save the pdf, and put the new tag back, Calibre now just shows the new, desired tag.

Thanks for checking in, I really appreciate it.

Any chance the 'Polish Book' thing could be available for PDFs.. would be a great way to just adjust title, author, tags without reconverting.

Thanks for the great app, sir... truly a work of art.

[kovidgoyal]

You do not need to reconvert, title, author and tags are updated whenever you export the pdf file from calibre using send to device, save to disk, etc.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You do not need to reconvert, title, author and tags are updated whenever you export the pdf file from calibre using send to device, save to disk, etc.

It changes it in the Calibre database, but it doesn't change any information in the PDF itself. So if I were to send the file to a friend to drag into their Calibre library, it would not have the new author name, title and Tag that I gave it in Calibre. If I change it in the PDF's properties, then no matter what library I drag it to, it has my preferred info.

Thanks again for the help Kovid. I'm not using nearly a tenth of the program's capabilities, but it's working great for me this way. I don't have that many PDFs anyway. Have a great day.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by Dougr33

It changes it in the Calibre database, but it doesn't change any information in the PDF itself. So if I were to send the file to a friend to drag into their Calibre library, it would not have the new author name, title and Tag that I gave it in Calibre. If I change it in the PDF's properties, then no matter what library I drag it to, it has my preferred info.

Are you sure that you are getting the PDF file out of the Calibre library filestore using "Save to Disk" rather than simply using the OS level facilities to copy it out? The "Save to Disk" option should be updating the mentioned metadata just like a Polish Books feature would if it was available for PDF files.

Having said that changing the PDF properties directly is certainly a more robust way of doing, albeit more effort. It would also allow you to set PDF properties that Calibre does not update.