HELP - lost all preferences and customization

[lauralee]

i am a long time user and appreciator of calibre. in the past i have moved my library without a hitch from computer to computer many times over the last 10+ years. i am not sure if my current disaster has any commonality with moving tho. i always did that very carefully and per instructions.

with this, i made a mistake. got excited about the idea of having access remotely to to the library to edit metadata after i finish a book directly on my phone without going thru the computer but having it still all there. so i synced the calibre folder (to my synology nas with s drive, which as i now have discovered should not have been done). the sync went well, copies on both the nas and computer looking good. but when i went back into calibre, everything was gone - the books, the plugins i had downloaded and customized (e.g. page counter), the custom fields (i had a multiple choice 'read' column yes/no, a genre column, a word count column, etc), custom import settings, etc., all empty. obviously i stopped the sync and started sweating.

after trying a few things like unsuccessfully copying the folder to the desktop and adding it as a new library with the same empty result, i was able to get calibre to read the books again by library maintenance->restore database. that brought back the books but nothing of my settings, plugins, columns. actually i see one plugin, view manager, but without its custom views i had.

i have a copy of the library folder from couple of months ago on the nas (as a normal backup, not a sync).

any ideas?? how do i get my settings and custom stuff back? is there a way to make calibre see the old version of the metadata.db i have from couple of months ago? also, i see 2 files in the .backup folder that was synced on the nas - would that be helpful?

anyone with any ideas or similar experience, please help!