Merging Duplicates question

[Kraftwerk]

Before merging all my duplicates, I just want to make sure I'm doing it right.

I tested it on one pair of duplicates:
I chose 'merge into first selected book - delete others' which seems to be what I want.

I understand what 'merge only formats into first selected book - delete others' means concerning the formats, but what happens once the formats have been merged?
Just one cover is used and the other deleted? Anything else happens that I need to know about?

If the above is the case, I think 'merge only formats into first selected book - delete others' will work better than my first choice I tested with.

And what actually happens when I add a book to my reading list?
When I connect my kindle it will automatically send the book to my kindle.
Will Calibre pick .mobi as the book to send each time?
How will I choose which format will be sent to my kindle, if for instance I find .mobi of a book is corrupted so want to choose the .epub format that I have merged?

[theducks]

You are asking questions about more than one Calibre area.
Merge is Calibre.

The rest appear to be Plugin related. Calibre does not PUSH to plugins. THEY need to detect changes and PULL updates.

My experience with Merge, is it does not replace (non-blank) target metadata.

(I have been typing Ctrl-M for so long, I did not realize some of those other options existed . I did discover I cold not ADD 'Merge" to the context menu )

[Kraftwerk]

Sorry for the late reply: I've been busy with work etc.

I didn't realise I was asking about two different areas of Calibre as I'm using the 'Find Duplicates' plugin, which I thought did everything that I needed using this plugin?

The plugin finds the duplicates and when you highlight the duplicated books you have options to choose on how to merge the duplicates.

I just want to make sure I understand it correctly before choosing one of the options.

I'm thinking of using:

'merge only formats into first selected book - delete others'

but was wondering what happens when different formats are merged into one folder.
For instance: Can I choose what format I can send to my kindle?

[theducks]

I see where you became confused. FD is just a complex set of searches.

Find duplicates posts the results (marked...) back to Calibre (note the Search term is shown) GUI.

You are back in the regular GUI when the FIND part has completed. You can select: delete, even rename as well as merge.

[Kraftwerk]

Any idea on the main part of my question concerning the merging of formats?
I'm trying to understand what happens once the formats are merged into one folder: Can I pick which format I can send to my kindle, or any reader for that matter?

I use the 'Reading List' plugin and have it setup to automatically send any new books added to the list to my kindle when connected.

If I have two formats and I want to choose a specific one, can this be done and if not which option when merging would be the best to use?

[davidfor]

You can choose which format to send, or leave it up to the driver. And, you can configure your format preference in the driver.

If you look at the driver configuration for your device (easiest way is to connect the device, right-click on the devices button and choose the configuration option), there is a list of formats. By default, the checked entries are those the device supports. And the order is the preference for which they are send. You can uncheck a format if you do not want to use that format on the device. You can also check other formats, but, there is no guarantee they will work when you send them to the device. When sending a book to the device, if the book has a format from that list, it will be sent when you send the book to the device. If the book does not have a format on the list, whatever format you have will be converted to the top one on the list. If the book has more than one of these formats, the format that is the highest on the list is sent.

When you send a book to the device, there is an option on the send-to-device button to send a specific format. When you choose the book and the option, a dialog will show the formats that are available to send. Choose the format you want on the device and it will be the one sent.

When using the Reading List plugin to send the books (either automatically when the device is connected or via the Sync option), it does not have an option to choose the format. It just sends the book and lets the driver sort out which format is sent.

[Kraftwerk]

@davidfor

Thanks for the detailed post. Very helpful.