Deleting books.
Not sure whether this should be a 'discussion' or just a comment.
I recently saw a question elsewhere on reddit about someone's filesystem not showing reduction after deleting 3GiB of stuff in Calibre.
People advised that person to go to their filesystem and find the Calibre trash can and delete the folder - but I assume this might cause issues with the database.
It turns out that, after you 'delete' books - they are simply moved to a private Calibre trash folder...
To remove those you have a choice:
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Wait the default 14 days set for Calibre to remove trash automatically... assuming this also will not be done if Calibre is not running it could be a lot longer.
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You must have the 'Remove Books' icon visible (I had to edit the toolbar to get that because I usually remove with keyboard or context shortcuts) and right click...
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Select the insane option 'Restore Deleted'. This does not do what it says, it opens a dialog showing trash items...
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From this dialog - home run... you can permanently delete (d) or restore (r) selected items.... but you can also set a more sane option to remove trash (Permanently delete after: 14>1>0 days).
Setting to 0 days means that files are trashed, and will be removed when you close Calibre.
Setting to 1 day gives you a safety margin to recover books even if you close Calibre (this seems the most sane default option).
I would suggest a slightly more logical/rational approach - with a separate TRASH icon and the option to show deleted items called 'OPEN TRASH' to be shown - as it's actually normal to open our Wastebin or Trash folders to find and delete or restore files.
I'm all for more transparency with file storage so a trash icon would definitely be a good option. Hidden files are never a good thing, especially if you're on a computer with limited space.
That said, I personally believe that this is a non-issue that people are making into an issue. I would argue that for 99% of Calibre users deleting files that amount to 3gb (or the 100gb the other user did) will never happen. When a 200,000 word book is 1mb, that's a lot of books. Obviously manga and comics will greatly inflate that number and that is a concern.
I think the one user was using Calibre not as a library, but as a metadata editor, so they never intended to leave the massive amounts of files in Calibre in the first place. There's probably a better program for that but Calibre works so I can't blame them.
Yes, I find it quite amusing when he told me that it was Manga and comics that he was deleting, I just found it really strange the way you get to the GUI to remove them.
It's already a little strange that caliber basically lacks menus in favor of icons.
I'm so accustomed to file-edit and in recent years hamburger menus.
I basically do everything either by using the hot key or from the right-click menu. Usually the only time I interact with the ribbon is to mess with settings or run plugins.
Btw, if you’re actually hoping to get this changed posting on mobileread.com would be better. Kovid, the creator of Calibre, regularly posts there. I don’t know if there’s actually a place to submit feature requests though.
The best workaround I've used is to create a new library and have Calibre copy-and-delete the books to the new location.
Yes, this requires free space (almost double the amount stored), but it is guaranteed. But, be warned, it is slow, better made it in 'blocks' of thousand or so books.
In fact, I used it more when I introduced inconsistency in the Database, inserting new books in two places and synchronizing with Syncthing.
First I made a internal transfer (with all metadata) and then an import of the original directory to retrieve any 'orphan' book.
I’m confused as to what this workaround is accomplishing. If you want Calibre to delete your books immediately , instead of saving them in a buffer, you can set the time to keep files to 0 days.
I did something similar when I removed all Drm from my library but that was just to manage metadata but if it works for you then that’s good.
Yeah, this is a two-year-old post. But you perfectly answered the question I was searching for after I deleted a ton of PDF formats and was gong crazy trying to figure out why they were still on my hard dive. Thank you!
Hello
You can edit the book's metadata and in the upper right apears a box to remove the book permanently.