Is there a way to "select all" text in Calibre?

ReadThis · 10-02-2013, 12:35 AM

Hi,

I'm working on Calibre with a desktop Mac, and after converting files to .mobi format, find that I cannot "select all" text and copy the contents.

Highlighting and scrolling is possible, just not selecting all text at once, which I thought was curious.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks.

theducks · 10-02-2013, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReadThis

Hi,

I'm working on Calibre with a desktop Mac, and after converting files to .mobi format, find that I cannot "select all" text and copy the contents.

Highlighting and scrolling is possible, just not selecting all text at once, which I thought was curious.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks.

All Text? Where?

Ctrl-A in the:
spreadsheet selects all Books,
Inside a field (eg inside the comments. All comments) area of the Metadata editor,

In Windows and Ubuntu: the (OS) standard keyboard selection shortcuts usually work

Maybe MAC's don't allow keyboard shortcuts

ReadThis · 10-02-2013, 04:55 PM

Thanks for the reply.

The 'select all" would be while reading a book itself, not selecting a group of books.

Calibre allows for highlighting and scrolling, but it takes a long time to get to the end of a long book. Minutes, in fact. But I can copy the text.

I read business books and PDFs differently from most. I try to dump the text in a text document, then carve out what I want to save, deleting the rest as I go. By the time I'm done I have scraps of notes in the document, and then when I reread, I can get the key points in a minute or two and I'm done.

To do this I need to be able to get all the text out of that book and into a Word doc, etc.

Thanks again.

BetterRed · 10-02-2013, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReadThis

Thanks for the reply.

The 'select all" would be while reading a book itself, not selecting a group of books.

Calibre allows for highlighting and scrolling, but it takes a long time to get to the end of a long book. Minutes, in fact. But I can copy the text.

I read business books and PDFs differently from most. I try to dump the text in a text document, then carve out what I want to save, deleting the rest as I go. By the time I'm done I have scraps of notes in the document, and then when I reread, I can get the key points in a minute or two and I'm done.

To do this I need to be able to get all the text out of that book and into a Word doc, etc.

Thanks again.

@Read This - are you saying that Cmd+A does not work on the calibre ebook viewer on a mac - if so then that's surely a bug.

Meanwhile you could convert the book to RTF, and read that in Word.

If you do a search for "copy on select for mac" it may give you some alternatives to do something like what I do with a a gadget called Click.To on Windows

Basically anything I highlight anywhere gets copied to my clipboard (which is extended and filtered by another gadget which you may not need on a Mac), so at the end of reading a text I have a stack of snippets in the clipboard, which I paste en-masse into a new entry in the relevant Evernote notebook - I do any tidy ups there.

My e-reading is similar to yours, politics, business, finance, law, economics etc - I prefer paper when reading for pure pleasure.

BR

ReadThis · 10-02-2013, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Read This - are you saying that Cmd+A does not work on the calibre ebook viewer on a mac - if so then that's surely a bug.

Does not work. If it's a bug, hopefully they'll fix it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Meanwhile you could convert the book to RTF, and read that in Word.

Excellent idea. Just tried it and it's perfect. Exactly what I needed.

Many thanks.

BetterRed · 10-02-2013, 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReadThis

Does not work. If it's a bug, hopefully they'll fix it.

Many thanks.

Pleasure was all mine.

BTW it's not a bug, see post 8 from theducks and mine at 9

BR

PeterT · 10-02-2013, 07:45 PM

Does this post from Kovid help:

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Quote:

Originally Posted by desimaniac

Hi everyone.

I've searched this up and down and could not find anything referencing this. But after I press COMMAND-D to download metadata, I get some options that have underlined characters, which I presume are meant for shortcuts. But I have tried everything combination (shift, command, alt, option) and cant seem to get them to work.

Any help would be appreciated, as this would greatly improve my speed with organizing my library.

They dont work on OS X, windows or linux only. IIRC OS X's interface guidelines dont allow keyboard accelerators, so Qt does not enable them on OS X.

theducks · 10-02-2013, 08:38 PM

Select-All is not available (even in Windows) for the book viewer

Copy is a button, not the common keystroke

This must be a limit on the Libraries used by the Viewer

BetterRed · 10-02-2013, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

Select-All is not available (even in Windows) for the book viewer

Copy is a button, not the common keystroke

This must be a limit on the Libraries used by the Viewer

By George you're right, I never looked, I sort of 'assumed' ctrl/a would be there.

I never wanted it as I would have done what I suggested - convert to RTF or put snippets into the clipboard stack via Click.to

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

They dont work on OS X, windows or linux only. IIRC OS X's interface guidelines dont allow keyboard accelerators, so Qt does not enable them on OS X.

I sometimes think of getting a Mac, but that's the best reason I've seen to stop - thinking about it.

BR

kovidgoyal · 10-02-2013, 09:59 PM

Since ebooks can be internally composed of multiple files and the viewer only loads a single file at a time, select all, even if it existed, would not do what you expect. Instead convert the book to txt or rtf, from where extracting all the text is easy.

BetterRed · 10-02-2013, 10:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Since ebooks can be internally composed of multiple files and the viewer only loads a single file at a time, select all, even if it existed, would not do what you expect. Instead convert the book to txt or rtf, from where extracting all the text is easy.

welcome back - I hope the break was pleasant

kovidgoyal · 10-02-2013, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetterRed

welcome back - I hope the break was pleasant

It was

10-02-2013, 12:35 AM	#1
ReadThis Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2013 Device: none	Is there a way to "select all" text in Calibre? Hi, I'm working on Calibre with a desktop Mac, and after converting files to .mobi format, find that I cannot "select all" text and copy the contents. Highlighting and scrolling is possible, just not selecting all text at once, which I thought was curious. Am I missing something here? Thanks.

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10-02-2013, 04:55 PM	#3
ReadThis Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2013 Device: none	Thanks for the reply. The 'select all" would be while reading a book itself, not selecting a group of books. Calibre allows for highlighting and scrolling, but it takes a long time to get to the end of a long book. Minutes, in fact. But I can copy the text. I read business books and PDFs differently from most. I try to dump the text in a text document, then carve out what I want to save, deleting the rest as I go. By the time I'm done I have scraps of notes in the document, and then when I reread, I can get the key points in a minute or two and I'm done. To do this I need to be able to get all the text out of that book and into a Word doc, etc. Thanks again.

10-02-2013, 08:38 PM	#8
theducks Well trained by Cats Posts: 29,800 Karma: 54830978 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: The Central Coast of California Device: Kobo Libra2,Kobo Aura2v1, K4NT(Fixed: New Bat.), Galaxy Tab A	Select-All is not available (even in Windows) for the book viewer Copy is a button, not the common keystroke This must be a limit on the Libraries used by the Viewer

10-02-2013, 09:59 PM	#10
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,856 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Since ebooks can be internally composed of multiple files and the viewer only loads a single file at a time, select all, even if it existed, would not do what you expect. Instead convert the book to txt or rtf, from where extracting all the text is easy.