Books not appearing on Kobo EReader

[Retiredjudge]

I have Windows 10 and a Kobo Libra H20. I have many books, .mobi files, that I can read on my computer with Calibre. When I connect my Kobo to my computer, I can connect and see the File Explorer screen for my Kobo. There are books there I have been able to read on my Kobo. So I copy a book from my computer to the Kobo. The book shows on the Kobo File Explorer Screen. When I double click on the book, it opens and reads in Calibre.

When I eject the Kobo it says "importing content" and then.... the book does not appear in "my books" on the Kobo.

I have tried using Calibre to re-convert the book to .mobi. No joy. I tried converting to epub. Again, no luck.

I read this thread. I saw where it said,
"I assume that you have set the kobo to show all the books (or My Books) not just the I'm Reading" list.

If not, press the Home button. Then press menu and navigate to Books."
When I press "home" I have NO "menu" option on my Kobo Libra H20.

Can someone please help me? Thanks in advance.

[Hemmi]

Kobos won't read mobi files. You need to convert them to EPUBs in Calibre to put them on the Kobo. Make sure you have the plug-ins installed to strip the DRM from your mobi files.

[DNSB]

The first item is how old is the thread that you read that advice in? Never mind, I located the thread. The first post was 2010-Sep-26, a time when the original Kobo was the only device Kobo sold. When SameerH posted in Nov. 2010 in that thread the Kobo WiFi had been released for about 3 weeks.

While Kobo ereaders can read .mobi format ebooks but they need to be the MobiPocket format without the changes made to the format by Amazon and not dual format (.mobi and .azw3 in the same package). I did a quick test by converting an epub book to mobi setting the output type to old in the Mobi output preferences and my Clara HD imported it and showed it in My Books though the cover thumbnail was garbaged.

My personal advice is to convert to epub and send those to your Kobo ereader.

Since you have a much newer device, you should see a line of icons at the bottom of your screen. When you tap on My Books, tap on the Books tab and then set the filter to All and the sort to Recent, do you see the books listed?

If not, what directory are you placing the files in? I would suggest creating a directory in the root of your exposed storage and giving it a short name (ebooks for example).

Do not place your books into the .kobo or other directory with a . as the first character in the filename since that . makes it a hidden folder for Unix based operating systems.

Once you have created that directory, edit the configuration for the KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended and enter that directory name as the start of the Save Template on the file formats tab.

Ebooks/{author_sort:sublist(0,1,&)}/{title} - {authors:sublist(0,1,&)} is the template I use which places the books inside the Ebooks directory in directories using the first entry in the author sort list as the name. The file name is the book title followed by the same first entry in the author sort list.

[Retiredjudge]

Thanks David!! I converted the book to Epub. No luck.

The Directory DOES have some .mobi files the Kobo can read, just not THIS (and other) books.

My filter is set to "ALL"

I can not for the life of me figure out what is the problem with the books that will not read on the Kobo.

Thanks for any further thoughts you have.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Retiredjudge

Thanks David!! I converted the book to Epub. No luck.

The Directory DOES have some .mobi files the Kobo can read, just not THIS (and other) books.

My filter is set to "ALL"

I can not for the life of me figure out what is the problem with the books that will not read on the Kobo.

Where is the "no luck" happening? Converting to epub? Or sending the book to the device? If the latter, have you removed the MOBI's that failed? When books are imported and this fails, it can block importing of other books. I'm not sure if this will happen with the MOBI, but, cleaning up before you retry something is always a good idea.

If you already have removed the other books, what happens when eject the device? Does the importing screen get shown? Does the progressbar move before the screen goes away?

[Retiredjudge]

I can move files either from Calibre, or with File Explorer, to the Kobo Screen.

The files appear on that screen. When I double click them, they read just fine either through Calibre or Adobe Digital Editions. When I disconnect the Kobo, those files do NOT appear in "My Books." I powered down, restarted, the books still did not appear in "My Books."

In every effort, when I eject the Kobo, my device says, "Importing Content." Nevertheless, the books do not appear in "My Books." I have a suspicion this is where the problem occurs.

Any further suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated. This is driving me crazy.

Thanks again.

I deleted all books save two that appear and read just fine. I again loaded a few problamatical books. Once again, the books appeared on the Kobo Screen, but did not appear in "My books."

[Retiredjudge]

After a three day struggle, I did a factory reset. PAIN in the neck!!!

But it appears THAT fixed my problem!!!

David, thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.

[davidfor]

A factory reset will have fixed it as it will have removed whatever was blocking the book from being read. Whether that was something about the book, another book or some other configuration, we don't know. If it happens again, we can sort it out then.

[Retiredjudge]

Thanks again David. After the reset, the book and others went in perfectly.

[Fat Abe]

There may be a way to get the "missing" file to show up in the reader without doing a reset. I encountered a similar problem with a Kobo reader with firmware v 2.5.2 circa 4-4-2013. The epub file was purchased from Kobo, and then imported into Calibre. The Calibre file was side-loaded into the Kobo reader. Prior to this, I did some file management through windows explorer by moving 4 older files from one subdirectory to another where I keep most books. Whatever this series of actions did to confuse the reader are a mystery to me. The book does not appear on either the basic author or title lists. However, once you are in the Library page, just get into the menu that allows you to search by typing in a keyword in the title. It found the book with just one word (Tombstone). You can then place that book on one of your shelfs. Probably a good idea to label that shelf, Lost and Found.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

There may be a way to get the "missing" file to show up in the reader without doing a reset. I encountered a similar problem with a Kobo reader with firmware v 2.5.2 circa 4-4-2013. The epub file was purchased from Kobo, and then imported into Calibre. The Calibre file was side-loaded into the Kobo reader. Prior to this, I did some file management through windows explorer by moving 4 older files from one subdirectory to another where I keep most books. Whatever this series of actions did to confuse the reader are a mystery to me. The book does not appear on either the basic author or title lists. However, once you are in the Library page, just get into the menu that allows you to search by typing in a keyword in the title. It found the book with just one word (Tombstone). You can then place that book on one of your shelfs. Probably a good idea to label that shelf, Lost and Found.

That is not what is happening here. Because, honestly, if the search found the book, then it was appearing in the book list somewhere. Either you don't have the sort correct to show it, or a filter was on to not show it. Another reason is the time on the device being wrong and hence the date sorting puts the book in an unexpected place in the list. People have said similar things before, and each time it is there, just no quite where they thought it would be.

There could also be differences in the firmware. The basics are the same, but, bugs have been fixed, timing of when the import is done has change, exactly what is imported has changed and enough other things that it would be hard to apply learnings from then to now.