Corrupted Database

[Ellachanted]

When I first started, the add option just added all the duplicates. Or I had my settings wrong. Anyway, I used the Find Duplicates plugin Highlighted the duplicate stories, and Merged them where the one had the metadata and the other had multiple formats. It took a while. But I didn't lose stuff that way. You can also delete the ones you don't want or know are bad by using ctrl and the enter button to select a bunch at a time and then delete them.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by chilady1

I don't understand anything you have said above - can you explain what you mean? I really do want to get Smith, Linda and Smith_Linda resolved so I don't have two separate folders for the same author. Can someone explain to me how to accomplish this?

NOTE: I have found the Quality Check plug-in takes care of the above, it finds duplicate author folders and consolidates them and uses the new naming convention with a comma not the underscore _.

What he means is, if you try to simply restore an older database, it will be out of sync with the actual folders used.

Every time you edit author or title metadata, or add new formats and book records, it writes that to the library folder, according to the filename path: {author}\{title} ({id})\{title} - {author}.{format} and most importantly, the database uses the file location to write new data to the book, and open/save/send the book. If the database says everything is in one place, because it used to be there, but a later version of the database changed that, then your books might as well not exist as far as the database is concerned, since it can't find them. It might not even find that out for a while, thus filling your library with scattered extra records that don't REALLY have any books in them.

[BetterRed]

- wrong threat

BR

[chilady1]

Hi - I'm back. Now that everything is back where it should be and the planets have been aligned (meaning my Database has been put to right) - I have been doing some very OVERDUE library maintenance.

QUESTION: Ran Check Library and it is showing me that I have extra titles. I see the description of what this means but how do I get rid of these extra titles? There is no check box or option to fix. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[Adoby]

I assume that you mean that there are titles in the library that aren't in the database? I have never had this problem and have no idea what the "description" you mention says, so the following is a guess:

One way to handle this could be to create a new library and copy all books over to the new library and delete them in the old. All this obviously done in the calibre GUI.

After this the new library should be error free.

Any books left behind in the old library you would have to examine to decide what to do with them. If you have a copy of the same book in the new library, then you can delete the extra left behind copy. Otherwise you'd most likely want to add the book to the new library.

It should be possible to do the same decisions and manipulations directly in the old library, without first creating a new library. But extreme care should be observed to avoid making matters worse.

[eschwartz]

As in, no errors, now calibre wants to check if there are extra files? It means there are extra files.

...


I put a false record in my calibre library folder to duplicate this error, and I am getting a checkbox that lets you choose "delete marked". See my screenshot.

If you want those books, DON'T do this! Use the File Explorer to cut and paste the listed folder into a new location, then add it through the "Add Books" menu. Otherwise, just check the box and select "delete marked".