Calibre 8.2.1 deleted all my Kobo collections

[notesurfer]

Hi folks,

Long-time supporter and lover of Calibre here, but I am absolutely crushed. I have 400+ books on my Kobo and they were meticulously organized into Kobo collections. Not only did the most recent Calibre update remove all my books from collections, if I try to re-add the books to collections on the device they are removed again when re-syncing with Calibre. So I guess I have three questions.

1. How do I actually add my books to collections now?

2. Am I going to have to manage collections via Calibre only and not use the device's built-in collection management?

3. Is there any way to restore all the collection attributes or are they gone forever?

Thanks in advance for any help you kind folks can provide.

[.tycho]

Were you running v7 prior to this? If so, the KoboTouchExtended driver has been removed and the settings moved to the built-in KoboTouch driver, so you’ll need to set your Collections and other settings again under KoboTouch.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by notesurfer

Hi folks,

Long-time supporter and lover of Calibre here, but I am absolutely crushed. I have 400+ books on my Kobo and they were meticulously organized into Kobo collections. Not only did the most recent Calibre update remove all my books from collections, if I try to re-add the books to collections on the device they are removed again when re-syncing with Calibre. So I guess I have three questions.

1. How do I actually add my books to collections now?

2. Am I going to have to manage collections via Calibre only and not use the device's built-in collection management?

3. Is there any way to restore all the collection attributes or are they gone forever?

Thanks in advance for any help you kind folks can provide.

1. Make sure you have auto-metadata turned on.
2. Configure the Kobo Touch driver for your collections.
3. Plug in your Kobo and let the collections be created.

Calibre 8 has moved KePub support from the plugins to the KoboTouchExtended driver to internal to calibre. Kovid is maintaining KePub support. All the features of the KTE driver have been moved to the KT driver.

[Sirtel]

Kepub support, you mean.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Kepub support, you mean.

Thank you for catching my mistake. It's been fixed. Can you please fix the quite as well?

[notesurfer]

Thank you both for your help, it is much appreciated!

Originally Posted by JSWolf

1. Make sure you have auto-metadata turned on.
2. Configure the Kobo Touch driver for your collections.
3. Plug in your Kobo and let the collections be created.

I've done this (I think) but my collections from the Kobo are not populating, nor is any collection info I put in the custom column being added to the Kobo.

Basically I went into Plugins and found KoboTouch - I assume this is what you are referring to as a driver. Customize plugin > collections > collections column. Then I added a custom column with the same name as the collections column in the KoboTouch plugin. I believe this is the same process I used for the page count plugin I have, and that is working correctly. What am I missing here?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by notesurfer

Thank you both for your help, it is much appreciated!



I've done this (I think) but my collections from the Kobo are not populating, nor is any collection info I put in the custom column being added to the Kobo.

Basically I went into Plugins and found KoboTouch - I assume this is what you are referring to as a driver. Customize plugin > collections > collections column. Then I added a custom column with the same name as the collections column in the KoboTouch plugin. I believe this is the same process I used for the page count plugin I have, and that is working correctly. What am I missing here?

Go to Preferences > Sending books to to devices. Next to Metadata management, make sure it's set to Automatic management.

[notesurfer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Go to Preferences > Sending books to to devices. Next to Metadata management, make sure it's set to Automatic management.

Yep, I've used that for a while to manage Series info. And I did try the requisite plugging/unplugging/replugging to let Calibre do its thing.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Thank you for catching my mistake. It's been fixed. Can you please fix the quite as well?

Done.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by notesurfer

Thank you both for your help, it is much appreciated!



I've done this (I think) but my collections from the Kobo are not populating, nor is any collection info I put in the custom column being added to the Kobo.

Basically I went into Plugins and found KoboTouch - I assume this is what you are referring to as a driver. Customize plugin > collections > collections column. Then I added a custom column with the same name as the collections column in the KoboTouch plugin. I believe this is the same process I used for the page count plugin I have, and that is working correctly. What am I missing here?

If it's a custom column, there must be # before the name (e.g. #genres).

[Highroller]

I’d suggest checking out the Calibre forums for any workarounds or plugins that might help with adding books to collections again. If nothing else works, you might have to manage your collections in Calibre only until they fix it.

[notesurfer]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

If it's a custom column, there must be # before the name (e.g. #genres).

Thank you! For anyone reading this thread later on: Kobo Touch plugin > Collections > Collections Column defaults to "kobocollections" so you have to manually add a "#" before that or else it won't properly read the column you added.

So, here's the workaround I've done. I have added each of my Kobo collections to the "Ignore collections" field in the Kobo Touch plugin. This appears to make it so that Calibre won't overwrite/delete the collections if I add them via the Kobo device.

However, at no point did Calibre read FROM my Kobo - it did not populate a list of possible collections, and it always overwrote the collections with whatever I put in the Kobo Collections column. This means that I would have to plug my Kobo into Calibre every time I want to make an adjustment to any collections, and any changes I make on the Kobo device would be overwritten by Calibre when I plug in to add more books.

If there is a way to sync between the device and Calibre properly I would love that. However, there's no way I'm going to plug my Kobo into my computer every time I want to manage collections. My collections include "Unread, Won't Complete, Finished" and so when I am done with a book I park it in the appropriate collection. It would be unreasonable to have to boot up my computer every time I finish a book, at least for my use case.

I'm just putting this comment out there because I know that official Kobo support is still in its infancy and I would imagine that I'm not the only one using my device in this way. Also it would be great to make it so that the default behavior is to READ collections not OVERWRITE them. I'm really not looking forward to re-categorizing 400 books . . . again, if anyone knows of a setting I've overlooked that will allow 2-way sync of collections I would be super appreciative! Thank you again to all those who commented, I'm at least back in business using my ereader again!

[Sirtel]

For my part, I've only ever used calibre for collection management on my Kobos. I've never created a collection manually on my Kobo.

But then I don't have any custom unread or finished collection, because Kobo sorts the books as unread, reading and finished by default, without any need to create collections for this. And those default categories are never overwritten by calibre.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by notesurfer

Thank you! For anyone reading this thread later on: Kobo Touch plugin > Collections > Collections Column defaults to "kobocollections" so you have to manually add a "#" before that or else it won't properly read the column you added.

So, here's the workaround I've done. I have added each of my Kobo collections to the "Ignore collections" field in the Kobo Touch plugin. This appears to make it so that Calibre won't overwrite/delete the collections if I add them via the Kobo device.

However, at no point did Calibre read FROM my Kobo - it did not populate a list of possible collections, and it always overwrote the collections with whatever I put in the Kobo Collections column. This means that I would have to plug my Kobo into Calibre every time I want to make an adjustment to any collections, and any changes I make on the Kobo device would be overwritten by Calibre when I plug in to add more books.

If there is a way to sync between the device and Calibre properly I would love that. However, there's no way I'm going to plug my Kobo into my computer every time I want to manage collections. My collections include "Unread, Won't Complete, Finished" and so when I am done with a book I park it in the appropriate collection. It would be unreasonable to have to boot up my computer every time I finish a book, at least for my use case.

I'm just putting this comment out there because I know that official Kobo support is still in its infancy and I would imagine that I'm not the only one using my device in this way. Also it would be great to make it so that the default behavior is to READ collections not OVERWRITE them. I'm really not looking forward to re-categorizing 400 books . . . again, if anyone knows of a setting I've overlooked that will allow 2-way sync of collections I would be super appreciative! Thank you again to all those who commented, I'm at least back in business using my ereader again!

The Kobo Utilities plugin does have a function to retrieve shelves from the device. Shelves are the same as collections; they were originally called Shelves by Kobo and then at some point, renamed to Collections.

[notesurfer]

Originally Posted by PeterT

The Kobo Utilities plugin does have a function to retrieve shelves from the device. Shelves are the same as collections; they were originally called Shelves by Kobo and then at some point, renamed to Collections.

Could that function have been moved somewhere else? Because the current Kobo Utilities plugin doesn't appear to have anything labeled shelves, collections or anything similar that I can see.