Kobo Touch My Shelves problem

CherylRainfield · 12-16-2014, 07:09 PM

Hi there,
I set up My Shelves on Calibre for my Kobo Touch ages ago, and everything worked beautifully. But about a month or two ago (maybe longer?) My Shelves (for My Collections in the newer version of Kobo firmware) started acting funny on my Kobo Touch. I would add my usual categories for My Shelves for each book on Calibre--like YA, YA fantasy, favorites, for one book--and all of the sudden, instead of each category being separate, when the books transferred over they were showing up as a list with commas between them. It's been driving me nuts.

And now most of the books are missing their "My Collections" categories--they're just not showing up in my Kobo, even though they are on Calibre. Including books that have been on my Kobo for a long time.

Could you please tell me how to fix this? I would so appreciate the help.

I'm using Calibre 2.12 64 bit on Windows 7 for Kobo Touch 3.12.0 firmware.

PeterT · 12-16-2014, 07:54 PM

I'd suggest checking what type the calibre column is that you area using for shelf names.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Forum Fiend v1.2.14.

CherylRainfield · 12-16-2014, 09:09 PM

Thank you, Peter. Er--how do i check what type the calibre column is? I know it's in the "add your own columns" section.... Also I have the plugin Kobotouch Extended...which i think i used/needed to make the columns....

PeterT · 12-16-2014, 09:48 PM

First go to Preferences | Change calibre behavior | Plugins, then expand the Device interface plugins section and highlight the KoboTouchExtended line and click the Customize plugin button.

Take a note of ALL fields listed in the Fields for bookshelves box. User defined columns start with a # symbol, calibre default fields don't.

Select cancel twice to return to the main preferences screen,

Nos select Interface | Add your own columns to see all the calibre columns, both default and user defined.

Select a column being used for your shelving and then the blue ! mark. This will show you the definition of that column. Ypu want to ensure that the columns being used are of type Comma separated text, like tags, shown in the tag browser.

CherylRainfield · 12-18-2014, 08:30 AM

Thank you so much for the step-by-step help; I so appreciate it!

User defined columns: #myshelves, series

Then in the blue i section, lookup name is myshelves, and the column type is:
"text, column shown in the text browser."

That sounds like what you said, just slightly different wording? I didn't see a place to change it; it's grayed out.

But i could delete it, and then add a new one using what you said. Would that work?

CherylRainfield · 12-18-2014, 08:40 AM

Um...so I probably should have waited to hear from you. I deleted the old MyShelves columns, set up a new MyShelves columns with teh settings you said...(restarting twice)...and it deleted all my old MyShelves tags/columns, of course. I wasn't thinking.

I DO have Calibre on an old laptop. Is tehre a way for me to copy over the tags so I don't have to manually re-add them all? Or do i have to manually add all the "my favorites," "YA fantasy" etc tags/columns in My Shelves again?

PeterT · 12-18-2014, 09:50 AM

I'm not sure of any easy means but I do hope you realized that #myshelves was just what *I* use and was just intended as an example.

What I would have suggested would have been to create a new column of the correct type, and then made use of bulk metadata editing to copy data from the old column to the new one, and then update the driver to point to the new shelf.

I assume lots of the books are in series; if so why not just highlight all books in a series, and then use bulk metadata editing to add the appropriate tag to all the books at the same time?

davidfor · 12-18-2014, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CherylRainfield

Um...so I probably should have waited to hear from you. I deleted the old MyShelves columns, set up a new MyShelves columns with teh settings you said...(restarting twice)...and it deleted all my old MyShelves tags/columns, of course. I wasn't thinking.

I DO have Calibre on an old laptop. Is tehre a way for me to copy over the tags so I don't have to manually re-add them all? Or do i have to manually add all the "my favorites," "YA fantasy" etc tags/columns in My Shelves again?

How different are the calibre libraries? If they are the same except for the column change, you could simply copy the library from the laptop and replace the one you have been using.

If they are similar, but have had enough books added or the metadata changed, that copying it would lose two much work, you could copy the shelves via the device.

The rough steps (I'm calling your main PC "the desktop" as the other is a laptop):

Connect the device to the laptop and run calibre. Let it do the shelf management.
On the desktop, remove the shelf management options from the driver.\
On the desktop, install the Kobo Utilities plugin.
Connect the device to the desktop and run calibre
From the utilities plugin menu, select the function "Get Shelves From Device". This is described here. In the options, select the new column you created for shelves. And you probably want "All books on device". But, I suggest trying a few books and seeing if it does what you want.
After doing this, put the new column into the shelf management field of the driver configuration.

I haven't tried all that, but it should work. I would recommend backing up the calibre library before doing it. If it doesn't do what you want, you can restore the backup and not lose anything.

theducks · 12-18-2014, 09:16 PM

You can use (on selected books)

Right-click: copy to library (visible one to destination)
If the CUSTOM field exists in the destination, it will be copied.
If it does not: that part of the data hits the bit bucket

Tweaks has options to preserve the original {date} and other things

I use this to transfer my fine tuned books from my Intake Library to the Main one

JSWolf · 12-18-2014, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

You can use (on selected books)

Right-click: copy to library (visible one to destination)
If the CUSTOM field exists in the destination, it will be copied.
If it does not: that part of the data hits the bit bucket

Tweaks has options to preserve the original {date} and other things

I use this to transfer my fine tuned books from my Intake Library to the Main one

When you copy from one library to another and the library you are copying from has custom fields, you get a requester showing the fields not in the destination library and gives you the option of copying over any of the columns.

theducks · 12-18-2014, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you copy from one library to another and the library you are copying from has custom fields, you get a requester showing the fields not in the destination library and gives you the option of copying over any of the columns.

I did not know that.

I was always careful to have my ducks in a row before attempting a copy.

CherylRainfield · 03-05-2015, 07:53 AM

So...I have a ton of ebooks in various MyShelves in Calibre, but most of them don't show up on my Kobo Touch. For instance, i have 243 ebooks under my MyShelves named YA Fantasy, but on my Kobo Touch, only 47 show up on my Kobo Touch under "My Collections" which is really MyShelves, and YA Fantasy. And this is after Calibre has synched with my Kobo Touch many times. How do I force my Kobo Touch to recognize all the MyShelves that it's not currently recognizing?

davidfor · 03-05-2015, 08:41 PM

Are all 243 books on the device? Some of the books not being on the device is the simplest explanation for the discrepancy.

If all the books are there, the most common reason for missing shelves is the driver configuration is missing the shelf options (see PeterT's post above) and the metadata management is not set to automatic. The metadata management option is in the "Sending books to device" page of the calibre preferences.

If these are set correctly, it should work. To see why it isn't, I would need a debug log. To produce this, restart calibre in debug mode, connect the device and wait for the initial jobs to run. When they have finished, close calibre and the debug log will be displayed. Post that, or send it to me in a PM.

CherylRainfield · 03-06-2015, 11:28 AM

Thank you SO much davidfor! My Calibre wasn't sent to automatic. I've set that correctly, and now all the ebooks are showing up. You're fantastic. Thank you!!!

CherylRainfield · 05-20-2015, 06:01 PM

Hi again. My Kobo Glo broke, so I ordered (and got) a Kobo Aura. I can't seem to get the shelves to recognize properly. For instance, all the recent books I've read and loved and marked "favorites" are not showing up or staying, either in Calibre, or, when I checked, in my Kobo Aura after I've synced with Calibre and my desktop. I'm wondering if I'm missing something basic, or if there's another plugin for Kobo Aura I should be using? I'm still using the KoboTouch extended; i searched the plugins for Aura and couldn't find one. I still have MyShelves set up on my Calibre, and all the books I already had seem to have transferred properly--it's just books I'm marking now on my Kobo Aura that don't seem to stay/transfer. Would so appreciate help. When i go to "sending books to devices" in preferences, it's set to "Automatic management."

12-16-2014, 07:09 PM	#1
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	Kobo Touch My Shelves problem Hi there, I set up My Shelves on Calibre for my Kobo Touch ages ago, and everything worked beautifully. But about a month or two ago (maybe longer?) My Shelves (for My Collections in the newer version of Kobo firmware) started acting funny on my Kobo Touch. I would add my usual categories for My Shelves for each book on Calibre--like YA, YA fantasy, favorites, for one book--and all of the sudden, instead of each category being separate, when the books transferred over they were showing up as a list with commas between them. It's been driving me nuts. And now most of the books are missing their "My Collections" categories--they're just not showing up in my Kobo, even though they are on Calibre. Including books that have been on my Kobo for a long time. Could you please tell me how to fix this? I would so appreciate the help. I'm using Calibre 2.12 64 bit on Windows 7 for Kobo Touch 3.12.0 firmware.

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12-16-2014, 07:54 PM	#2
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,166 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	I'd suggest checking what type the calibre column is that you area using for shelf names. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Forum Fiend v1.2.14.

12-16-2014, 09:09 PM	#3
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	Thank you, Peter. Er--how do i check what type the calibre column is? I know it's in the "add your own columns" section.... Also I have the plugin Kobotouch Extended...which i think i used/needed to make the columns....

12-16-2014, 09:48 PM	#4
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,166 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	First go to Preferences \| Change calibre behavior \| Plugins, then expand the Device interface plugins section and highlight the KoboTouchExtended line and click the Customize plugin button. Take a note of ALL fields listed in the Fields for bookshelves box. User defined columns start with a # symbol, calibre default fields don't. Select cancel twice to return to the main preferences screen, Nos select Interface \| Add your own columns to see all the calibre columns, both default and user defined. Select a column being used for your shelving and then the blue ! mark. This will show you the definition of that column. Ypu want to ensure that the columns being used are of type Comma separated text, like tags, shown in the tag browser.

12-18-2014, 08:30 AM	#5
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	Thank you so much for the step-by-step help; I so appreciate it! User defined columns: #myshelves, series Then in the blue i section, lookup name is myshelves, and the column type is: "text, column shown in the text browser." That sounds like what you said, just slightly different wording? I didn't see a place to change it; it's grayed out. But i could delete it, and then add a new one using what you said. Would that work?

12-18-2014, 08:40 AM	#6
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	Um...so I probably should have waited to hear from you. I deleted the old MyShelves columns, set up a new MyShelves columns with teh settings you said...(restarting twice)...and it deleted all my old MyShelves tags/columns, of course. I wasn't thinking. I DO have Calibre on an old laptop. Is tehre a way for me to copy over the tags so I don't have to manually re-add them all? Or do i have to manually add all the "my favorites," "YA fantasy" etc tags/columns in My Shelves again?

12-18-2014, 09:50 AM	#7
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,166 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	I'm not sure of any easy means but I do hope you realized that #myshelves was just what I use and was just intended as an example. What I would have suggested would have been to create a new column of the correct type, and then made use of bulk metadata editing to copy data from the old column to the new one, and then update the driver to point to the new shelf. I assume lots of the books are in series; if so why not just highlight all books in a series, and then use bulk metadata editing to add the appropriate tag to all the books at the same time?

12-18-2014, 09:16 PM	#9
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	You can use (on selected books) Right-click: copy to library (visible one to destination) If the CUSTOM field exists in the destination, it will be copied. If it does not: that part of the data hits the bit bucket Tweaks has options to preserve the original {date} and other things I use this to transfer my fine tuned books from my Intake Library to the Main one

03-05-2015, 07:53 AM	#12
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	So...I have a ton of ebooks in various MyShelves in Calibre, but most of them don't show up on my Kobo Touch. For instance, i have 243 ebooks under my MyShelves named YA Fantasy, but on my Kobo Touch, only 47 show up on my Kobo Touch under "My Collections" which is really MyShelves, and YA Fantasy. And this is after Calibre has synched with my Kobo Touch many times. How do I force my Kobo Touch to recognize all the MyShelves that it's not currently recognizing?

03-05-2015, 08:41 PM	#13
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	Are all 243 books on the device? Some of the books not being on the device is the simplest explanation for the discrepancy. If all the books are there, the most common reason for missing shelves is the driver configuration is missing the shelf options (see PeterT's post above) and the metadata management is not set to automatic. The metadata management option is in the "Sending books to device" page of the calibre preferences. If these are set correctly, it should work. To see why it isn't, I would need a debug log. To produce this, restart calibre in debug mode, connect the device and wait for the initial jobs to run. When they have finished, close calibre and the debug log will be displayed. Post that, or send it to me in a PM.

03-06-2015, 11:28 AM	#14
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	Thank you SO much davidfor! My Calibre wasn't sent to automatic. I've set that correctly, and now all the ebooks are showing up. You're fantastic. Thank you!!!

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05-20-2015, 06:01 PM	#15
CherylRainfield Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle and Kobo Glo	Hi again. My Kobo Glo broke, so I ordered (and got) a Kobo Aura. I can't seem to get the shelves to recognize properly. For instance, all the recent books I've read and loved and marked "favorites" are not showing up or staying, either in Calibre, or, when I checked, in my Kobo Aura after I've synced with Calibre and my desktop. I'm wondering if I'm missing something basic, or if there's another plugin for Kobo Aura I should be using? I'm still using the KoboTouch extended; i searched the plugins for Aura and couldn't find one. I still have MyShelves set up on my Calibre, and all the books I already had seem to have transferred properly--it's just books I'm marking now on my Kobo Aura that don't seem to stay/transfer. Would so appreciate help. When i go to "sending books to devices" in preferences, it's set to "Automatic management."