Duplicate books - multiple formats

[mranlett]

I am a noob but I did try to find the answer in the forums (to no avail) before posting this question:

I have a library of ebooks of a variety of formats (.lit, .html, .txt, .pdb) and several of my books are duplicated in several formats. For example, I have The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as .txt and .html.

I've just begun to use Calibre to import some organization to my library (time consuming and laborious to touch every book but understandably necessary) and am forced to use the "import recursively, treat every file as a different book" based on the terrible structure of my source ebook directory. As I process the books into the Calibre DB, how do I group the same book (different formats) into a single entry rather than having 2-4 entries per multi-format book?

[myle00]

If you use the GUI just select the book record in the library and click edit metadata. You should than find an option to "add format". I believe there is also something like this in the command line. In other words, you'd have to manually add these books to the the library record. Because using mass import will just add a record per format.

[Landrovan]

In the "Edit meta information" window, you can add a existing format to the entry.

In your case, you probably want to remove duplicate than add other format manually. I don't know if it exist a faster way.

[mranlett]

Originally Posted by Landrovan

In the "Edit meta information" window, you can add a existing format to the entry.

In your case, you probably want to remove duplicate than add other format manually. I don't know if it exist a faster way.

If I delete the book out of Calibre first, won't it get rid of the file from disk? Seems like I need to do the consolidation first, then get rid of the extra references.

Wow, this is really going to take me forever but when I'm done I should have a superbly organized library.

[myle00]

You should know that calibre doesn't touch the original file when you import it, so you'll always have access to the original files unless you delete them.

[Expert11]

Originally Posted by mranlett

I am a noob but I did try to find the answer in the forums (to no avail) before posting this question:

I have a library of ebooks of a variety of formats (.lit, .html, .txt, .pdb) and several of my books are duplicated in several formats. For example, I have The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as .txt and .html.

I've just begun to use Calibre to import some organization to my library (time consuming and laborious to touch every book but understandably necessary) and am forced to use the "import recursively, treat every file as a different book" based on the terrible structure of my source ebook directory. As I process the books into the Calibre DB, how do I group the same book (different formats) into a single entry rather than having 2-4 entries per multi-format book?

I think u should use an application for this purpose which can delete files duplicate i use duplicate finder 2209 for such aims.