Tags - can I remove deleted tags?

[pdurrant]

I'd never bothered with Tags much in calibre. But now that justRead uses tags, I thought I'd better clean them up - I had many hundreds of different tags from books on import, which meant they weren't useful at all.

A session with the calibre tag manager got my tags down to 32. Not all books had tags, but at least the tags that were there were now consistent.

So I updated all the books that needed updating in justRead using the Calibre Books menu item.

But while the tags menu in justRead is now more useful, because the initial menu item just shows the most popular tags, which are now mostly the ones I've set in calibre, if I go to "All Tags...", all the hundreds of old tags still show up.

How can I get the list of tags in justRead to be trimmed to just the tags now present on the books?

[petrjahoda]

Hi pdurrant, thank you for this.
As for now all tags show all the tags, that were historically used, but you are right, only tags, that are realistically present should be shown.
Going to the list and will be in next update.

[petrjahoda]

Version 2.5.1 with showing only used tags pushed to AppStore.

[pdurrant]

Once again, I'm really impressed with how quickly you respond to comments.

I'll let you know how it goes once that version appears.

[petrjahoda]

Hi, this was one of the easiest things to do, as this was just a change in select into database and should have been there in the first place.

[pdurrant]

I now have 2.5.1. I'm still seeing all the old tags in "All Tags"

Selecting one of the old tags brings up some books, despite these tags no longer being in calibre, and the Calibre Books menu in justRead showing no changes needing to be downloaded.

When I did the big change of tags, lots of books were updated, and the main list of tags in justRead does reflect the changes made in calibre.

I couldn't find a way in justRead to show look at which tags it thought were on an individual book. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious.

[petrjahoda]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Selecting one of the old tags brings up some books

But that means those books have those tags in justRead. As you can scroll those tags for every book, can you please check this?

[pdurrant]

I may have found a symptom of the problem.

I have 5690 epubs in my calibre library. And Calibre Books in justRead shows 5690 books in the list.

But I'm showing 5695 books in justRead. And looking through my list of books, I see five books appearing twice - and now I see that the tags are shown in the library list. For duplicate books, one copy has no tags, and the other has the new tags.

I'll try deleting the no-tags duplicates and see if that helps.

I coud only find four of the five, and I don't think it was the problem.

Instead, searching using the tags, and now knowing where to look in the book details in the library view, I see that some books still have the old tags, even though the tags are absent in calibre.

I suppose I could clear the library and re-download everything. But I'd have expected the sync from calibre to pick up the changes automatically.

Is it something I might be doing wrong?

[petrjahoda]

So you can make it simple: create a filter with a tag you do not want to have, it will filter all the books but this only one tag and then you have the books with bad tags. When you deleted those books, this tag will not be shown.

[petrjahoda]

Sorry, wrongly read: you are saying you have a book in calibre with different tags than the same book in justRead?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by petrjahoda

Sorry, wrongly read: you are saying you have a book in calibre with different tags than the same book in justRead?

Yes. Lots, apparently.

[petrjahoda]

OK, can you please make a test: pinpoint one book, add tag TEST in Calibre, is it shown as changed in Calibre Sync? And when synced, does this TEST tag show in justRead? And then when you delete it in Calibre, is it again changed and when synced, without TEST tag in justRead?

[pdurrant]

Added TEST tag in calibre to one book.
Calibre Books shows - over 5,000 changed? It was showing 0 earlier today!
However - found the book which I'd added a tag to, and only synced that one.
TEST tag appears on the book in justRead.
TEST appears in list of all tags

Removed TEST tag from that book in calibre.
In Calibre Books that book again appears in the Changed list. Syncing that book.
TEST tag has gone from the book in justRead.
TEST no longer appears in th list of all tags.

So the tag mechanism seems to be working fine. But for some reason, the changes to the books wasn't noticed. The difference from earlier today is that I quit and restarted calibre.

Anyway, I'll try syncing all 5000+ books. I rather expect that that will get rid of the excess tags. I can only think that this is some problem with calibre server - although I didn't restarting during the tests with the TEST tag. Very mysterious.

[pdurrant]

OK, 5264 books synced and metadata updated.

But all the old tags are still showing in All Tags...

The first one is &#160. There are some that start with numbers. There's one that's :bestseller (yes, starting with a colon). There's also one that starts with double quotation marks (") and has several in the tag.

There are four books with the &#160 tag.
They do not have this tag in calibre.
I have added TEST2 as a tag to one of them in calibre.
I now see one changed book (that one) in Calibre Books.
I sync that book.
That book no longer has the &#160 tag, but does have tag TEST2

(more tests in next post)

[pdurrant]

I quit and restart justRead.
Calibre Books shows no changed books.
I quit and restart calibre (and so quitting and starting calibre server)
Calibre Books shows 2 changed books. (Both are the books I used when adding a TEST/TEST2 tag)

Hmm... Send to Calibre is showing 5266 books to sync!
(last sync was two hours ago)
I'll give it a go. I have backups.