The Ultimate Kobo Tips & Tricks Thread

[flatspotting]

I made a thread about this but maybe it is better to ask here. I bought a Kobo Libra colour in hopes that I could get rid of my weekly planner and just use this one device. So far I cannot for the life of me find a way to add a calendar - or even a pdf with working date links as a template would be fine, really anything where I can add notes to specific days. Is this possible? Is there another app I can install to get this?

Thanks in advance!

[compurandom]

You can add notes to an epub, but not a pdf.

In theory, it would be possible to write an app and side load it.

[turnroot]

Finding typos and errors while reading is a total nightmare because it means that you have to delete the book you're reading. I haven't found any way to fix those without losing all annotations and bookmarks every time i "fix" a book in Calibre. Whether it be colored text issues that makes it impossible to read in dark mode, or conversion from epub to kepub that messes up the paragraph breaks, images, and so on. As far as I understand, this is because every conversion after a fix creates a new version of the book.

Two issues that I have recently discovered that really makes me feel that Calibre is lacking in certain departments:

* Dark mode did not work for my current book. I had to go and make a new conversion with KoboTouch Extended to remove color information. A new version was created. I had no way to transfer my old annotations to the new fixed epub file.
* I discovered that kepub is a much faster and responsive format and now I want this for every book, including the ones I've read. I reread books and reference them due to work. Problem is, I'll lose all my bookmarks and annotations if I convert my whole library of epubs to kepubs.

Can someone please explain to me like I'm five how to navigate around this? Why must new files be created every time I have to change something in the book? I have all the recommended plugins installed but the don't really solve this issue. Or I just don't understand how to do it.

[Aleron Ives]

The solution would be to create a standard workflow of book editing that you use to correct common problems and annoyances before you ever load the book onto your device and try to read it. If you make substantial edits to a book after the fact, it effectively becomes a different book. Kobo uses different rendering engines for EPUB vs KEPUB, so they're effectively separate environments. Even if you manually delete the old book and replace it with a new one, making certain kinds of changes will cause Kobo to treat it as a new book, even though it has the same name.

It is possible to export the annotations you've made in a book to a plain text file, and then you have a record of what you've highlighted in order to re-create the annotations by hand for the "new" book. You may wish to just do all your reference work on a separate device to avoid having to redo everything when you edit your books. You could also use KOReader to give yourself greater flexibility for book formatting to override badly formatted books without having to edit them.

[AndyCr15]

I wonder if someone can help. In Calibre I've added some new cover artwork to some books. I think my Kobo Color was connected when I did this. After disconnecting the new covers are not showing. How do I force it to update info from Calibre to the Kobo? Thanks!

[hatuluang]

Originally Posted by AndyCr15

I wonder if someone can help. In Calibre I've added some new cover artwork to some books. I think my Kobo Color was connected when I did this. After disconnecting the new covers are not showing. How do I force it to update info from Calibre to the Kobo? Thanks!

Use the polish book on Calibre to embed the cover and metadata to your book before you sideload it to Kobo. You can add polish book on Calibre toolbar.

[DNSB]

Using Polish or ModifyePub should not be necessary since the default is for calibre to update the cover and metadata in the file before sending it.

If you have KoboUtilities installed, you can use it's Upload Covers for Selected Books option to send the cover images to your Kobo without needing to resend the books.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by AndyCr15

I wonder if someone can help. In Calibre I've added some new cover artwork to some books.

The kobo generates the cover the first time it sees a book and then caches it.

Kobo utilities can update the cover in cache directly and then you don't need to resend the book. If you do resend the book, the cover in cache won't be updated by the kobo unless it sees it as a totally new book.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by compurandom

Kobo utilities can update the cover in cache directly and then you don't need to resend the book. If you do resend the book, the cover in cache won't be updated by the kobo unless it sees it as a totally new book.

Yes, this - if you use 'do not treat replacements as new books' set in the driver, you need to use Utlities to update the cover. You also need to use Utilities option to update the table-of-contents if there's any changes to that.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Yes, this - if you use 'do not treat replacements as new books' set in the driver, you need to use Utlities to update the cover. You also need to use Utilities option to update the table-of-contents if there's any changes to that.

Yes this exactly.

Also note that if you change the structure of the book, especially the TOC, and don't fix it with this option on, the book won't page correctly either.

But most other minor changes don't cause problems, so it's typically not necessary to treat replacements as new books if you take care of the above two issues. I think your highlights and bookmarks won't get disturbed this way, although if you add major new content you may find their location drifts from the correct location.

[foosion]

numPartialUpdatePageTurns

I set this to 50. When I look at settings, it says None Selected rather than Oh the Humanity or 50. It does seem to refresh every 50 screens or so, unless there is an illustration on a page. That triggers a refresh.

Kobo Libra 2, latest firmware.

[Aleron Ives]

That's correct. There used to be a patch to change the options in the pulldown so you didn't have to edit the configuration file manually, but I guess the patch got deprecated.

[Usered]

Anyone know why, while the collections on the kobo are updated everytime I add a tag to a book from calibre, if I add a book to a collection directly from the kobo calibre will not recognize it and when I connect my device the book will be eliminated from the collection I put it in? Sorry if it's convoluted

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Usered

Anyone know why, while the collections on the kobo are updated everytime I add a tag to a book from calibre, if I add a book to a collection directly from the kobo calibre will not recognize it and when I connect my device the book will be eliminated from the collection I put it in? Sorry if it's convoluted

Unfortunately, that's the way the driver is designed I'm not certain but for some reason I thought @davidfor had at one point a solution for that, but unfortunately my forum search-fu is failing me.

[ownedbycats]

That's normal. Whatever you have set in the KoboTouch(Extended) settings for collection management will override your manually-set collections on the device. A good argument to have a dedicated column for it.