Single click convert to ePUB

[Darkbreeze]

So, I have a great eBook manager, Calibre, but it doesn't have or offer any kind of integration with the windows shell for right click context menu conversion. Anybody know of a utility or program with single click context menu conversion for the common formats (.txt, .rtf, .html, .mobi, .doc(x), etc.) to ePUB format?

I'm converting all of the books in my collection to ePUB, for uniformity and so that every time I open a book I don't have to go through the "open with" process, because I don't want to set most of those formats to automatically open with Calibre since much of the time the file with that extension won't be an ebook file that I'm opening.

I don't need all of my Word documents trying to open with Calibre, so I just want to convert all my existing ebooks that are in a variety of formats, but converting by going into every author folder, adding the books manually to Caliber and THEN converting, then going back to the new folders it outputs to and moving the now converted copies back into the original author folder and THEN deleting the original file, is just too time consuming. Be nice if somebody knows about an app that can do this as I've outlined.

If it has the ability to also edit metadata quickly, which Calibre can do, but not quickly and it tries to argue with you about the correctness of some information, that would be nice too.

OS is Windows 10.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It would also be preferred if it allowed you to designate the folder of origin as the folder of output, so you don't have to change the destination folder for every author.

 

[USAFRet]

Searching for solutions to this (even since your last request), just leads to various 8 zillion clicks using Calibre.

What you seek would be a REALLY good thing.

There may be some custom scripted solution via the Calibre command line.
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/cli-index.html

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, it would. I'm baffled that this exact thing does not exist. It exists for everything else, including MP3's, FLAC files, PDFs, etc.

I did manage to find this thing, which is based off the Calibre core program, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet to see if it works or not, the way I want it to. Might do that tonight. Wasn't exactly what I was hoping for I don't THINK, but maybe closer than anything else so far.

I know somewhere out there there is an unreleased applet that can do exactly what I want, but it likely won't make Google's list of favorites.

http://jscholes.net/project/codex/

 

[BFG-9000]

I think the ideal one would work like the batch image resizer Powertoy from XP, or its replacement for 7-8-10 by a Microsoft software engineer. Highlight all the items you want to convert and right-click, then pick ePUB output. Elegant.

I've found though that sometimes there can be some odd formatting changes in some conversions so don't delete the originals. Having to open and compare both files manually before deleting would be an impossibly time-consuming task.

If you run into such a file, and are only converting commercial ebooks, then some online converter such as https://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-epub could do the job without installing anything, but would obviously entail exactly the kind of manual file manipulation you are trying to avoid. At least it seems to do a fairly good job of retaining the original formatting in the conversion. Different output when using different converters though suggests the translation between formats is not perfect.

While they promise not to retain any data for over 24h, I would be leery of converting any personal files or other things I wrote myself in this manner.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Batch conversion, even with a pop up to configure options and settings upon context menu selection for varied formats would be fine. Calibre doesn't seem to have a problem with converting a .lit, .txt, .rtf and a .pdf, or several of them, in a batch conversion, so I think there should be a script add on or separate application that could do this as well without issue and the formatting problems exist, potentially, no matter what conversion software you use, so that too is not deeply troubling.

I would even be ok with just using Calibre if it would allow me the simple ability to point to a different folder for each batch of conversions, so I wouldn't have to move them out of it's library and back into the authors folder where it belongs, AND if it would stop trying to incorrectly use part of the filename to fill in author data and stop adding author sort information to the output filename. I've tried about everything in the options and it still does all of these things, but the real deal breaker is the fact that it won't allow you to output converted files anywhere except to it's own library folders.

There are plenty of conversion applications for other types of media that have these features and I see no reason other than simply stubborn stupidity for Calibre not offering them. Members of the support team for Calibre say they will never offer these features, which is plain asshattery.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, never found anything that did EXACTLY what I wanted, BUT, I did find a program that does exactly what I needed it to do, which is batch convert whole selections of ebooks regardless of format being .lit, .docx, .pdf, .html, etc. AND does not try to convert them into it's own library and rename everything. It also allows you to directly determine exactly what folder the converted files are output to. So it does everything I wanted except for having right click conversion and I can live with that since it does allow you to drag them from an open folder into the application.

It's called "Any ebook converter", http://www.ebook-converter.net/ worth using and uses the Calibre engine, but does so much differently than the main Calibre program.

Thanks for the help anyway guys, I appreciate the attempt because you never know. A lot of times somebody here has insights that we may not on a given topic.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, there may be something here:
https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/

https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/conversion

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'll take a look in there. Honestly, if that anyebook converter had right click context options, it would be as though somebody had designed it exactly to the specs I was looking for.