Check library: Add missing found

[compurandom]

In the check library panel, I want a "Add missing" button in addition to the "Delete" button.

I've got a bunch of books in my Calibre library directory that aren't in the database and should be. Right now, to fix that, I have to move their directory out of the Calibre Library and re-add them, which is quite tedious. It seems like it would be easy to leave them where they are and just add their existing metadata (in the opf file) and the cover to the database.

[theducks]

I think the issue is:
Some of the info (the {id}being one)is now incorrect and would require a complex procedure to adjust.

The bigger question: What are you doing to orphan those books? Calibre has a pretty robust transaction process.

[BetterRed]

If you have a lot of 'orphans':

• Create a fresh library, and then use calibre's copy to library (delete after copy) feature to move all the 'unorphaned' books and all their metadata to the fresh library.
• Use calibre's Remove library feature to remove the old library from calibre, that will remove the library from calibre's list of libraries, it doesn't delete anything. Delete the metadata.db and any .json files from the old library directory.
• Add the books from the old library to the fresh library using calibre's Add Books from directories, including sub-directories (One book per directory . . .) option.

Then stop doing whatever you've been doing that created the orphans, such as adding and renaming author and book directories with a file manager.

BR

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by theducks

I think the issue is:
Some of the info (the {id}being one)is now incorrect and would require a complex procedure to adjust.

Understood... as an alternative, maybe an option to rename all the offending directories to a new subdirectory outside of the library; I could then import the books from normally. I've pretty much been doing that by hand anyway.

The other suggestion here was to essentially rebuild the library from scratch. That's not really a good option, as the library is in good shape, and these broken/missing books make up less than 10% of a very large library, and even less now that I've been chiseling away at it slowly.

The bigger question: What are you doing to orphan those books? Calibre has a pretty robust transaction process.

Hard drive failure including silent data corruption, restoration from multiple backups to try to go back before the corruption started without losing items that were added later and were not corrupted. Ya, I'd like to stop that too, but as far as I can tell, I haven't lost any real data.

[theducks]

I would go for BR's approach.

Be sure to set which 'duplicate' option in preferences: Adding Books