Remove all BUT certain tags?

[eric11210]

Hi folks,

I know this question is likely not possible, but I thought I'd ask it anyway. I downloaded a lot of books off the Internet lately and prepped them for my new Sony Reader which arrived today. I used the automatic feature of Calibre to fetch metadata. There's just one problem. I now have 4,250 tags! Obviously 99% of them are completely meaningless and worthless. Tags include things like "1200-953 BC" and "gold theft" none of which is useful to me but which was added automatically by Calibre. I'd like to remove all BUT certain specified tags (such as "fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, etc.). I know I can select all books and then edit metadata and select which tags to remove, however I wanted to know if there is a "remove all tags except these" feature. That would make this much more useful.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Eric

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by eric11210

I know this question is likely not possible, but I thought I'd ask it anyway. I downloaded a lot of books off the Internet lately and prepped them for my new Sony Reader which arrived today. I used the automatic feature of Calibre to fetch metadata. There's just one problem. I now have 4,250 tags! Obviously 99% of them are completely meaningless and worthless. Tags include things like "1200-953 BC" and "gold theft" none of which is useful to me but which was added automatically by Calibre. I'd like to remove all BUT certain specified tags (such as "fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, etc.). I know I can select all books and then edit metadata and select which tags to remove, however I wanted to know if there is a "remove all tags except these" feature. That would make this much more useful.

I'm going to let others tell you how to do what you want. I'm going to just comment that the two books tagged "1200-953 BC" and "gold theft" sound interesting to me! If you look at the books, agree they're interesting, then think you might want to read one six months from now, you may find you'll remember the "gold" tag before the associated title.

I like the multiple tags and keep them. I like browsing the tags and looking at strange tags/books that pique my curiosity. I like the fact that I can search the tags, since I can't search the text in the books.

You might consider doing it the way I do - set up a separate user defined tag field, and put the tags you want in there, while leaving the fetched tags alone.

[kovidgoyal]

Simply right click on a tag in the Tag Browser and choose Manage tags

[jjansen]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Simply right click on a tag in the Tag Browser and choose Manage tags

I have been using Calibre for years and have never seen these right click options. I went through hoops recently renaming lots of my tags. This is great. Thanks for all the neat features.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by jjansen

I have been using Calibre for years and have never seen these right click options. I went through hoops recently renaming lots of my tags. This is great. Thanks for all the neat features.

What you see today, was probably not there last week

Calibre changes (for the better) almost every week.
v 0.7 brought a whole new set of features.

Who knows what v 0.8 will have

[eric11210]

Thanks for the info and suggestions. Starson, while I understand where you are coming from, the problem is that I want my reader to be easily manageable. If I have hundreds or thousands of books available, they all get listed with the tags as "collections" on the reader, making the "collections" feature effectively useless. However, your suggestion did pique my interest as I was looking through tags and saw some that did speak to me personally. So I do thank you for bringing it to my attention. Just not sure what I'll do with those one off tags that actually sound like they're worth keeping. If there are too many, it creates a problem on the Sony Reader since it doesn't seem to let me choose favorite tags (otherwise, I'd simply keep them all and designate favorite tags for actually keeping my library organized).

Oh, and Kovid, thanks for an amazing program. It's really great.

Eric

[eric11210]

Forgot to mention: I'd already deleted the tag for years BC, however the gold theft tag in case you were curious is for an old Hardy Boys novel, the Secret of the Lost Tunnel (I was a huge fan as a kid so picked up a few of them for my reader).

Eric

[speakingtohe]

I have my collections by author instead of tags which can be changed in the Sony plug in.

[eric11210]

Interesting idea, but I figured that since I can sort by author in the book selection it would have more value to sort by genre in collections.

Eric

[speakingtohe]

Ahh.. I find it easier to have a collection by author with series in order, rather than paging through authors sorted in order.

Each to his own I guess

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by eric11210

If there are too many, it creates a problem on the Sony Reader since it doesn't seem to let me choose favorite tags (otherwise, I'd simply keep them all and designate favorite tags for actually keeping my library organized).

You might want to consider going to Preferences - Plugins - Metadata download plugin and customize each plugin and uncheck download tags. This will prevent any tags being downloaded when you grab metadata.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by eric11210

Thanks for the info and suggestions. Starson, while I understand where you are coming from, the problem is that I want my reader to be easily manageable.

Aha - I see your problem. I don't have one of those tags=>collections e-readers, so I don't have that problem. I've been thinking that if I ever get one, I'm going to look at a way to send my tags over into custom tags, basically swapping the two.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

You might want to consider going to Preferences - Plugins - Metadata download plugin and customize each plugin and uncheck download tags. This will prevent any tags being downloaded when you grab metadata.

All that lovely metadata - lost in the black hole of uncollected bits .... it makes me sad

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Starson17

All that lovely metadata - lost in the black hole of uncollected bits .... it makes me sad

Once Chaley finishes the custom column as an option to create categories I might start grabbing all of the tags.

Any chance you can incorporate an option to prevent the "series" from being overwritten when grabbing metadata?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Any chance you can incorporate an option to prevent the "series" from being overwritten when grabbing metadata?

I haven't actually seen it overwrite the series. Perhaps I haven't been observant. I don't see series in the fields that appear during the search, and it hasn't seemed to overwrite my defined series in quick testing.

Can you flesh out when it happens? (What online data sources have the series? Does it zero out an existing series or just change when the value is not None? etc.)

It shouldn't be hard to do - do you see any problem with just adding that to the current option that controls overwriting of Author/Title?