lots of empty folders, "no suitable source format found" -- clueless

[etitameh]

okay, I give up on figuring this out for myself. I've been trying to get the hang of calibre, and am having the devil of a time... I have tons & tons of random ebooks in random formats, downloaded from random places (sigh). Calibre gives me a lovely list, and I've been going through and changing mix-ups like title/author switches and the like. Then, I started trying to convert files into MOBI format...

A bunch of them are in LIT format, for example. So, I choose 'LIT' from the format list, and see tons of entries -- yay. However, a good number of them, when I try to convert them, say 'no suitable source format found'... and indeed, when I open the file path from calibre, the folder's empty. Now, I *DO* have LIT files for these books, but they're in other wacko folders nested 3-6 deep...

So, what do I do from here? Do I need to move the ebooks into less-nested folders? Is there some way I can tell calibre to look more deeply? Am I missing something obvious, or not-quite-so-obvious? Should I scrap the whole mess?!? :P

[theducks]

Originally Posted by etitameh

okay, I give up on figuring this out for myself. I've been trying to get the hang of calibre, and am having the devil of a time... I have tons & tons of random ebooks in random formats, downloaded from random places (sigh). Calibre gives me a lovely list, and I've been going through and changing mix-ups like title/author switches and the like. Then, I started trying to convert files into MOBI format...

A bunch of them are in LIT format, for example. So, I choose 'LIT' from the format list, and see tons of entries -- yay. However, a good number of them, when I try to convert them, say 'no suitable source format found'... and indeed, when I open the file path from calibre, the folder's empty. Now, I *DO* have LIT files for these books, but they're in other wacko folders nested 3-6 deep...

So, what do I do from here? Do I need to move the ebooks into less-nested folders? Is there some way I can tell calibre to look more deeply? Am I missing something obvious, or not-quite-so-obvious? Should I scrap the whole mess?!? :P

I can tell you from recent experience , that Calibre can not deal with a Rar/Zip within a Rar/Zip. Are any of those nested source folders "compressed"?

[eric11210]

Well if they are imported into Calibre, Calibre should be able to find them. If you have no imported them into Calibre, that may be your problem. You need to set Calibre to look for books in subdirectories (click the little arrow next to add books). Also, in addition to the issue of zip files (everything must be unzipped first), if you have any that are really .doc format, they will not work. Finally, I found after having done something similar myself that sometimes the files you download are simply not formated correctly and Calibre can't read them. Try opening the file in the ebook reader. If Calibre can't open it in the ebook reader, you have a corrupted file.

I'm sure others with much better knowledge will be along with additional suggestions, but these were just based on my experiences downloading various books and importing them. I ended up trashing a bunch that were just not importing correctly.

Eric

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by eric11210

everything must be unzipped first

Calibre will accept books in zipped form, but not doubly zipped.

if you have any that are really .doc format, they will not work.

Calibre will store .doc format books, and will pass them to your reader, but it can't convert them.

[eric11210]

Yeah, what Starson said is what I meant. I shouldn't be writing comments at 2:30AM local time . It's just not conducive to writing something clear.

Eric

[etitameh]

First, thanks for the replies!

I believe they're all unzipped, but that's a good next thing for me to check.

And yes, I have imported them, using the arrow-down beside the 'add books' button, and selecting 'add books from directories, including sub-directories (multiple books per directory; assumes every ebook file is a different book).'

I understand about the DOC formats, too, but these are showing up as LIT, when I filter by format, then seem to not be able to actually locate the LIT files themselves.

[etitameh]

OK, I went and checked for zipped folders and such -- no luck; everything's unzipped, so far as I can tell. However, when I click on 'Open path' for one of the books, the path it's using is nothing like the path at which the actual file is found (which has an annoyingly large number of nested folders; something like 6). Any suggestions on how to remedy this? My current thoughts are to delete the entries from calibre for anything that's not found like this, and re-add them... Since I've already done title/author edits and such, though, I'd like to avoid that if possible.

[itimpi]

Books that have been copied into the Calibre library folder as part of the 'Add Books' process should have a relatively flat 2-level folder structure based on author/booktitle. It sounds as if you might be looking at where the original files are rather than the copies that have been copied into the Calibre library?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by etitameh

when I click on 'Open path' for one of the books, the path it's using is nothing like the path at which the actual file is found (which has an annoyingly large number of nested folders; something like 6).

When you click on 'Open path' for one of the books, you should see the books that Calibre added to its library. Those books are copies of the original book, which was apparently buried in nested folders. Are there any books in the path that opens when you click on 'Open path' in Calibre?

[etitameh]

Originally Posted by Starson17

When you click on 'Open path' for one of the books, you should see the books that Calibre added to its library. Those books are copies of the original book, which was apparently buried in nested folders. Are there any books in the path that opens when you click on 'Open path' in Calibre?

Nope. Where I end up when clicking 'Open path' is indeed a nice and clean 2-level system... but it's empty -- no books, no files whatsoever. It appears to my relatively untutored eye that, for a number of books at least (since some do show up just fine), calibre somehow made the file structure, but did not copy over the ebook files themselves. So, what should I do from here?

itimpi -- you're right, the actual files I can find are in the original locations, not calibre's newly-created folders. The problem is, since I've already added them through calibre, how do I get copies of the files into the clean new folders??

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by etitameh

itimpi -- you're right, the actual files I can find are in the original locations, not calibre's newly-created folders. The problem is, since I've already added them through calibre, how do I get copies of the files into the clean new folders??

If you select a file and then use Edit Metadata a dialog will open where you can/remove book formats to that book entry or replace an existing format with a new copy of that format. You can also use drag-and-drop to add new formats via that dialog.

[etitameh]

Hmm... I'll take a look at that and see what I can make it do -- thanks!

EDIT: Perfect! That's exactly what I was missing. Thanks so much itimpi & Starson17 for helping me muddle through. karma for you both!