Newbie Needs Help: HTML pages to ePub

[Amalthea]

Hi, I'm new to Calibre, and need some help with the conversion process.

I've been searching for a couple weeks on how to convert multiple HTML pages saved from the web into an ePub preferrable with a table of contents. After trying various fanfiction downloaders/grabbers (none of which supported the site the story is on) and trying Instapaper (which would have been great...except for the 20 page limit on conversion), I decided to give Calibre a try.

What I did was zip 38 HTML pages (chapters of the fanfic) and dragged the zip into Calibre. But when I viewed it, it only listed chapter 30. So I copied the code from the manual to make a table of contents and pasted it into notepad, then renamed the file to .html and opened the containing folder in Claibre and opened the zip and dragged and dropped the table of contents file into it.

When I viewed the zip format of the book (I hadn't yet converted it), still it listed only chapter 30 and no table of contents. Also, not all of the metadata that I had added (comments, publisher, tags) showed up. It lists the title as the story name and chapter 30, lists the author as chapter 30 and has the publisher as unknown.

So I tried converting to ebup and see what happened. Well, the metadata was correct, but it still only listed chapter 30 and the table of contents showed the original three links at the bottom of each html page (next, previous, return to archive).

I'm utterly lost and confused. I'm not that literate with HTML and coding and need step-by-step instructions on how exactly to convert the 38 web pages into an epub and make a linked table of contents. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Amalthea

What I did was zip 38 HTML pages (chapters of the fanfic) and dragged the zip into Calibre. But when I viewed it, it only listed chapter 30. So I copied the code from the manual to make a table of contents and pasted it into notepad, then renamed the file to .html and opened the containing folder in Claibre and opened the zip and dragged and dropped the table of contents file into it.

I'm assuming you're talking of the code in this FAQ entry (if you aren't that's the one you want ). Try creating the file in the directory you downloaded the HTML files into. Open the file in a browser to verify that it works and all chapters are linked. Then, drop that file and only that file into Calibre (either add it as a new book or remove the ZIP format from your existing entry and add the HTML file you created as a new format). Calibre will then look at the file, gather all locally saved files it links to or embeds and zip those up, creating a new ZIP format. Convert from there and all should be good.

Edited to add: As for your metadata problem, that's expected behaviour: Metadata of books inside the Calibre library is only changed when the book is converted. If you export from the library (send to device or save to disk), the metadata gets updated, as well.

[Amalthea]

Originally Posted by Manichean

I'm assuming you're talking of the code in this FAQ entry (if you aren't that's the one you want ). Try creating the file in the directory you downloaded the HTML files into. Open the file in a browser to verify that it works and all chapters are linked. Then, drop that file and only that file into Calibre (either add it as a new book or remove the ZIP format from your existing entry and add the HTML file you created as a new format). Calibre will then look at the file, gather all locally saved files it links to or embeds and zip those up, creating a new ZIP format. Convert from there and all should be good.

Yes, that's the code I'm referring to. Thanks for the reply. I'll give that a try and post back.

Edited to add: As for your metadata problem, that's expected behaviour: Metadata of books inside the Calibre library is only changed when the book is converted. If you export from the library (send to device or save to disk), the metadata gets updated, as well.

Okay, thanks for the info.

[Amalthea]

I hadn't thought to check the chapter links when opened in a browser. I discovered that only the first two chapters were found, so I had to edit the coding in the file (copy and pasted the line from ch 2 and just edited the rest of the ch numbers). Removed the zip format and added the file then converted.

Thanks again, it worked like a charm!