Problems with collections on Kobo Aura

[scbs29]

Hello all
I have been using Calibre for quite some time to transfer epubs to my Kobo Aura.
Up till now, I have added the books into Calibre, edited the metadata to set Author and Series and sent to the Kobo.
eg. if I have a set of books author F Bloggs, and I decide I want them to be stored in a series TheseBooks then I set these in Calibre and send to the kobo. The books have always been stored under a folder with the author name, and are accessible through a collection of the series name.
Recently I have had to replace my pc due to sudden and catastrophic death of my old one. I installed Calibre and the Kobo software, but now when I send to device, the books are stored under author as before, but the collection does not exist.
Can anyone advise me?

[davidfor]

You probably need to configure the driver to send the collections. See the Wiki page Kobo_Shelves_and_Collections for the details. And come back here if you have any problems.

[scbs29]

Thankyou for your reply.
I did as you suggested and followed the instructions in the wiki. For the exercise I stayed with using myshelves, My Shelves as shown in the wiki.
I attach a zip of screenshots of setup of the new column and plugin settings.

I then selected 124 epubs to be sent to the device. All of them had the same metadata, ie. Author, series and custom metadata.
Of the 124 files, only the last 2 are sent to the device, and they are renamed to
#myshelves, series.epub and #myshelves, series.txt as separate files with no author.

The Kobo drivers in Calibre are
Kobo Reader Device Interface (2.3.3) by Timothy Legge and David Forrester
Communicate with the Kobo Reader

KoboTouch (2.3.3) by David Forrester
Communicate with the Kobo Touch, Glo, Mini, Aura HD, Aura H2O, Glo HD, Touch 2, Aura ONE and Aura
Edition 2 ereaders. Based on the existing Kobo driver by Timothy Legge and David Forrester.

My Kobo in the Kobo utilities shows as a Kobo Aura, Version 3.18.0, not as those listed.
Might this be the cause of the problem ? Or have I got something completely wrong ?
Calibre version 3.33.1
Windows 7 professional 64-bit.

[DNSB]

At quick look, you are customizing the wrong device interface plugin. Try the the KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended (if you are sending kepubs) driver and place your collection information on the second page. The place you placed your collection information is to control the filename and location of files sent to the device. In other words, every book you sent that is in same shelf and series is being given the same name so you are overwriting most of the files with the next file being sent.

For me, the filename field is filled with: Elibrary/{author_sort}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)} which gives me usable file names. I don't use collections preferring search.

I've attached a couple of images of what I see with the KoboTouch driver. I would suggest you go back to the Kobo Shelves and Collections wiki and re-read it carefully paying strict attention to the second step.

[scbs29]

Thankyou for your reply.
I do, however, prefer to use collections, which I have done all along and the ones I set previously are still on my Kobo.
I followed meticulously the instructions in the wiki page and customised both Kobo drivers, either separately or together but it made no difference.
I edit metadata for all the books in bulk, including setting Custom metadata to the series name (checking afterwards), select books and send to device. Only the last book is transferred and give the name #myshelves,series.epub. No other files, author or collection are on the Kobo.

[scbs29]

Just to see what happened, I uninstalled and reinstalled Calibre. I then added the books I wish to transfer and set the metadata Author and Series. I did not do anything else.
I then selected Send to Device. All of the books were sent to the device and existed on the device in a folder of the author name. The collection is listed on the device under the series name. I open the collection and all of the books are there, but all just say Unknown Author and Buy Now.
Listing the books on the device shows the books, and each one opens normally and can be read.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by scbs29

Thankyou for your reply.
I do, however, prefer to use collections, which I have done all along and the ones I set previously are still on my Kobo.
I followed meticulously the instructions in the wiki page and customised both Kobo drivers, either separately or together but it made no difference.
I edit metadata for all the books in bulk, including setting Custom metadata to the series name (checking afterwards), select books and send to device. Only the last book is transferred and give the name #myshelves,series.epub. No other files, author or collection are on the Kobo.

David isn't saying that you use anything, he is saying that the configuration you're showing does not configure the collections in the device, but the file name. The section you should configure is in the following picture (Spanish interface, sorry), as the second picture he has shown.



With that configuration for the name of the file, I don't exactly the name, but I guess something as "#myshelves, series".*, so the 124 books are transferred... but one is overwritten by the following one.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by scbs29

Thankyou for your reply.
I do, however, prefer to use collections, which I have done all along and the ones I set previously are still on my Kobo.
I followed meticulously the instructions in the wiki page and customised both Kobo drivers, either separately or together but it made no difference.
I edit metadata for all the books in bulk, including setting Custom metadata to the series name (checking afterwards), select books and send to device. Only the last book is transferred and give the name #myshelves,series.epub. No other files, author or collection are on the Kobo.

What I was trying to say, the image you showed was for the Kobo driver (for old non-touch devices). The section you were placing your collections information into is the one used for generating the directory/filename when saving to your device. Which would save all your books with collection & series as the filename. This is going cause issues as duplicate filenames are overwritten so only the last book with that name would be seen -- does that sound familiar?

The images I posted were from the KoboTouch driver interface with the first image showing the save information. The second image for the Collections, Covers & Uploads tab is where you would place collection information. As I said, I don't use collections so I leave that space blank but I was attempting to point you at the location where you should have been placing the collection information.

For me, it is a lot faster and fewer taps to do a search than to page through page after page of collections and then through the books in a collection. For instance, I have 360 books with the series tag Cooking. Obviously, YMMV.

[scbs29]

Thanks for all the replies and help.
As I thought, I had got it all wrong. I have just tried again, and except for the books being saved as name.kepub.epub all seems well. I assume that there is a way of getting rid of the .kepub part ? I will have to investigate.
As was inferred from the replies, I had the wrong driver and was using incorrect information in Calibre.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by scbs29

Thanks for all the replies and help.
As I thought, I had got it all wrong. I have just tried again, and except for the books being saved as name.kepub.epub all seems well. I assume that there is a way of getting rid of the .kepub part ? I will have to investigate.
As was inferred from the replies, I had the wrong driver and was using incorrect information in Calibre.

If you are seeing books named .kepub.epub, it suggests you are using the KoboTouchExtended driver which will convert epub to kepub (Kobo epub - file extension is .kepub.epub) while transferring them to your Kobo (this triggers using a different renderer which is more or less epub3 compatible). You can switch to using the KoboTouch driver to send epubs.