New problem with collections data on Kobo Libra 2

[Charlotte-B]

I recently bought a new Kobo Libra 2 (there are a few left out there!), because my old one had acquired a row of dead pixels, which I found distracting.

The new reader seemed at first to work fine. But today I encountered a weird problem with transferring collections information from Calibre onto the Kobo. This has been working fine for a long time on my original device (or so I thought - see below), so at first I thought it was some issue with the new device itself, rather than with Calibre or plugins. But I now suspect it might be something to do with a recent Calibre update (which may be completely wrong, and I'd be delighted to be corrected; but it's the only way I can make sense of it).

So, the problem itself takes the following form. I have a few thousand books that I've accumulated over the years, all of them side-loaded (I prefer to sideload even the books I've bought, because I like to tweak the epub files). I have many collections set up. But I noticed today that, while some appear to be populated with books (i.e. at bottom-right of the home-screen, I'm randomly offered a collection to select), when I actually click through to take a look at the collection, it tells me "You have no books in this collection" - even though three books are clearly named as belonging to it in the icon on the home-screen that I clicked to go through to the collection. Also, the covers are missing from the three books displayed on the home-screen as being in the collection. They show up fine elsewhere: for example, if I search for, say, "Moby Dick", then it appears in the search results with its cover (or takes a second to display the cover if it's the first time I've looked for it). But when I go back to the home-screen again, the instance of it showing up as being in the "Fiction" collection at bottom right still shows a blank cover. I've never encountered this behaviour before.

When I go, via "My Books" on the home-screen, to look at the list of collections, all of them seem to be displayed there - so, somehow the device has acquired the names of all my collections from Calibre; but only a few of them claim to contain any books, and far fewer than are, in fact, in those collections in my Calibre library (i.e. 5 rather than 400, or whatever). Also, even the collections that do register as having some books in them, when I click on the name of the collection, say "You have no books in this collection".

I should say that, if I start manually allocating books to collections on the device, then everything works as it should. But that's not a practical solution given how many books I have - and, for me, would cancel one of the main benefits of using Calibre in the first place. Also, the issue with the missing book covers persists, and I can't find a way of removing the "phantom" books from collections that, in fact, have no books (i.e. resetting the number of books alongside a collection name in the collections list back to zero, when zero is in fact the correct number).

As I said, I did initially think there was some issue with the device. But I've done a factory reset three times, with identical results.

Then it occurred to me to check my old device. While the vast majority of the collections data on it is in order, I discovered that the more recent books I've added to it have exactly the same problem - i.e. even if they belong to one or more collections in Calibre, where I transferred them from, this collections data doesn't show up for those more recent books.

So, it seems as if it must be an issue with Calibre rather than the device(s)? Maybe some glitch relating to a recent update?

Just in case anyone is tempted to make this suggestion: yes, I have checked that "Metadata management" is set to "Automatic". Also, everything seems to work fine with the Series metadata.

I did consider trying to downgrade to a previous version of Calibre, just to see whether it is something to do with a recent update. But I read somewhere on this website that doing so is "not advised or supported", so I haven't tried that yet.

I'm very sorry this is so long-winded, but I thought it seemed worth explaining in detail, in case anyone else has encountered the same issue.

If anyone out there can point me to a solution, I'd be very grateful!

[Charlotte-B]

One detail to add: When the bottom-right portion of the home-screen randomly decides to show three works by an author, rather than three books from a collection, the book covers show up just fine. Whatever the issue is, it seems to be exclusively related to collections data.

[Charlotte-B]

Another detail: I just worked out that, on my old device, all the books added on or before 16 March this year have all the correct Collections info. - but all of the ones added on 17 March or after don't have any showing on the device. Might this correspond to the date of a relevant update? I can't find a straightforward way of checking...

(Also: I haven't checked every single book, so this might be wrong; but spot-checks seem to confirm it.)

[Charlotte-B]

D'oh!

Just realised I hadn't added "#collections" into the KT settings after removing KTE.

If a moderator would like to remove this whole thread, that's fine by me. Otherwise, maybe leave it up if it might be useful to others?

[BetterRed]

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