Keep the full file name and not add "unknown" ?

[bounce]

Hi,

I'm trying to convert some files and the title of the text and the author are already in the file name (title - author). I'd like to keep the full file name after conversion and not add "unknown" as the author.

The way it's set for conversion now, part of many author's names at end of the file name are being cut off by Calibre and I need to be able to search their last names to pull them up. I don't care about any metadata.

Calibre has a lot of settings and I'm not sure where to look?

[PeterT]

See if https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/gui...ename-metadata helps

It describes how to extract data from the file name when initially adding content to calibre.

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[bounce]

Thanks, I'd been reading the manual, experimenting for hours with settings, and still can't make heads or tails of how to do it. Surely, I don't have to learn regex expressions to preserve the full file name on conversion and not add "unknown"?

In preferences: I'd already had "Read metadata from file contents instead of file name" checked to off.

I've also been reading another thread similar to what I wanted to do (keep full file name and don't add "unknown" author) and they mentioned to uncheck read metadata from file contents and to also:

1. Open Preferences
2. In Preferences, choose Adding Books (in the Import/export section)
3. In Adding Books, uncheck "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name"
4. In the "Configure metadata from filename box", there is a drop down menu under Regular expression. Choose (?P<title>.+)
5. Click Apply, close Preferences and you are done.

Another change I made was to stop Calibre from appending "- Unknown" to the end of all my filenames (e.g., "the author"):

Go to Preferences, "Sending books to devices":
Change "save template" to {author_sort}/{title}

I'd done all of the above and I'm still getting "unknown" added to the file name and the original full file names are still being cut off.

[PeterT]

Rather than just selecting "(?P<title>.+)" which just assigns the Title and leaves Author as Unknown, try using "(?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>[^_]+)" which will set both Title AND Author.

You can test it by putting a file name in the field labelled "File n<"ame" and pressing the Test button.

[bounce]

That expression was default wasn't it? I'd tried that initially with "Read metadata from file contents instead of file name" unchecked.

Just tried it again and it added unknown file name. Is there a setting besides in adding preferences of Calibre that needs to be changed? Pretty sure this is happening when adding though because you can see in the pic (might have to full screen it), the Calibre folder the original Markdown file has "unknown" added and so does the converted text file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h68nr5rxsy...%20AM.png?dl=0

[McStubb]

Its a matter of selecting read data from filename and then configuring the <title> -<author> regular expression to collect the data you need while importing it into calbre

[PeterT]

Remember this only applies when adding content. Also did you try pasting one of your filenames into the text box and hitting the test button?

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[bounce]

Actually, I figured it out. My files didn't have a hyphen between title and author. They were title "by" author. Thanks for the reply and hth someone