Error message on opening Epub

[estiew2002]

I have an epub file that was imported into Calibre. I downloaded metadata for it without a problem. but when trying to open I get error message "Could not open ebook. Not a zip file" . Below i copied the details from the error message. the ebook was downloaded with other ebooks. One of them opened without a problem about a year ago. any other books from that collection i tried to open give the same error. the ebook is over 20MB in size but I have have another book this size and it works fine.

calibre, version 0.9.40
ERROR: Could not open ebook: Not a ZIP file

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\viewer\main.py", line 40, in run
File "threading.py", line 763, in run
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\oeb\iterator\book.py", line 99, in __enter__
File "site-packages\calibre\customize\conversion.py", line 241, in __call__
File "site-packages\calibre\ebooks\conversion\plugins\epub_in put.py", line 167, in convert
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\localunzip.py", line 223, in extractall
File "site-packages\calibre\utils\localunzip.py", line 210, in _extractall
ValueError: Not a ZIP file


thanks in advance

[kovidgoyal]

That error indicates the epub file is corrupted. You can try to open it in another epub viewer to confirm that, if you want.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by estiew2002

I have an epub file that was imported into Calibre. I downloaded metadata for it without a problem. but when trying to open I get error message "Could not open ebook. Not a zip file" .

The fact you could import it into Calibre and download metadata for it doesn't actually mean it's a valid epub. And this error simply means these files are either not real epub files at all (which are ZIP files) or they are seriously corruptes ones. Either way, they are a lost cause, I fear.