The Ultimate Kobo Tips & Tricks Thread

[Michael Kozlowski]

For all the Kobo newbies, here is a mega-thread with all the tips and tricks so far. If anyone learns any new tips and tricks, please post them here.

1) USING THE KOBO WITH THE KOBO SOFTWARE

Create an account at the Kobo website, or log into your existing Kobo account. Click on your library. Unless you have done some fiddling already, all the books you have bought will appear in your 'I'm Reading' list. This is what will sync to the Kobo.

If you have some books you have read already and/or don't want to syn to the Kobo, click the checkmark beside them, then click the delete button at the top of the list. The books will still be in your purchased books area but will no longer be on your I'm Reading list.

Plug in the reader. Open the desktop software folder and install the software for your type of computer (Windows or Mac). Launch the software, log into your Kobo account. Click the sync button. The books will sync onto the Kobo Reader.

Books loaded onto the reader in this way will not appear as files if you double-click on the device icon in the desktop. If you want them to appear on the device and be editable, you will have to load them through other means such as Adobe Digital Editions or via drag and drop.

2) USING THE DEVICE WITH ADOBE DIGITAL EDITIONS

Log onto your Kobo account on the website. Go to your library. Click on the 'download epub' icon and when prompted, save the file to your desktop.

Go to your desktop and right-click on the .acsm file. Choose 'open with Adobe Digital Editions' and open the file. While you are in ADE, authorize the Kobo reader to your account.

You should then be able to drag and drop books from your list in ADE onto the reader icon.

Note: If you are downloading library books, it is the same procedure. Sve the .acsm file and open it using ADE.

3) USING THE DEVICE WITH CALIBRE

Make sure the Kobo Reader is plugged in. Have Calibre open and make sure you can see the 'Kobo Reader' icon on your desktop.

Select a book from your list. If it is not in epub, convert it using the 'convert' button.

Right-click on the file name. Choose 'open containing folder.' Drag the epub file onto the Kobo Reader icon on the desktop.

4) FIXING AN EPUB WHICH WILL NOT LET YOU CHANGE THE FONT

MAC users: Download a program called ePub Zip
PC Users: Download a program called Free Zip

Click on the epub file. Click on the file name---it should become highlighted so you can edit it.

Change the part that says .epub to .zip.

Double-click on the new zip file. It will make a folder.

Open the folder. Find the file that says stlyesheet.css and delete it. (IT may be inside another folder like the OEBPS one.

MAC Users: Drop the folder onto ePub Zip and you're done.

PC Users: Use Free ZIp to make a zip file. Highlight the file name and change the .zip to .epub and you're done

Drag the new epub file onto the Kobo Reader icon.

Note: Files edited this way will allow font adjustment, but may lose other formatting such as full justification

5) DELETING THE PRE-INSTALLED BOOKS

Kobo ships with about 100 preloaded books, which you can also download for free from sites like feedbooks.com. As there is no way to organize your books, navigating to your favourite book can be cumbersome.

I chose to delete the preloaded books and upload the handful of books that can be easily accessed.

On Mac OS X, I used the following command to delete the preloaded books.

sqlite3 /Volumes/KOBOeReader/.kobo/KoboReader.sqlite "delete from content where ___userid != 'adobe_user'"

Make sure that you make a backup of the "KoboReader.sqlite" file before modifying it.

Once you are done, eject the Kobo and "reset" it (see the pin hole at the back).

[JeDi]

Hi, is there a continuation to your post? I notice that point 5) - Deleting the pre-installed books, has no detail after the heading. This is one of the issues that I called Kobo support about, to which they had no current solution.

[Michael Kozlowski]

I added it, sorry about that!

[Alfred]

Hi,

For point (5) DELETING THE PRE-INSTALLED BOOKS ...is there a way yet for doing this on a PC (WinXP) ? I know the company was suppposed to come up with a way but hasn't shown users yet.

Anyways thanks for the tips & tricks

[markus]

I got rid of the 100 books, and everything else. (The "everything else" was books I purchased and checked out of the library; I put those back in at the end.)

So far anyway my Kobo doesn't seem like a brick. But really, I don't know what will happen to you and your Kobo if you try this.

The first thing I did was go to ADE and take everything I could off of the Kobo.

Then I backed up the Kobo's file system by copying it to someplace on my hard drive. I don't actually know if this would be effective if needed. Maybe it wouldn't work to just copy it all back to the Kobo. I didn't have to, so I don't know. I just copied everything in the Kobo -- using Windows Explorer -- onto the hard drive.

Everything else below I did right on the Kobo, with Windows Explorer and a Firefox add-on called "SQLite Manager." The Kobo came up on my computer as drive G.

I had some PDFs in the G:\ directory. I deleted those.

I opened the G:\books file with Notepad and deleted everything in the file. It's just a text file; I think this was some values of the variable "contentID" in the database content table -- maybe for the freebee books? Anyway. I saved the now-empty file.

I went to G:\.kobo\images folder and deleted all the files (this is the cover images).

I used the SQLite Manager to open the database and delete all of the entries (but not the table structure!) of the tables: "content", "shortcover_page", and "volume_shortcovers". This took a few minutes, definitely. (I did it with simple SQLite statements; line-by-line manually would take forever.)

In the "user" table I deleted the user "Nickel Bundle" (which left just me as a user). "Nickel Bundle" appears at various places, and I assume it pertains to the 100 freebees.

I didn't fool around with the "DbVersion" table.

Added step: compact the database ("vacuum" command in SQLite parlance). This takes a while.

I closed the database, ejected and unplugged the Kobo. Seemed okay.

I plugged it back in again and added the books I purchased from Kobo store, and checked-out books in the ADE. As usual, I had to go into the Kobo and move the checked-out PDF books up to the root (G:\) directory so they would appear at all (as documents, not books).

Interesting facts:
-it seems to have worked just fine.
-the G:\books file remains empty, but that doesn't seem to have any effect.
-at some point while I was fooling around with the db (I didn't notice it when it happened) the red battery-ok light came on. I haven't seen it for ten days!

[droid]

How to Create a Bootable SD Card For Your Kobo


Tools Needed

• 1 bootable thumb drive (Ubuntu linux)
• A computer that allows booting from a USB device with a card reader. (Most modern computers will have this the USB boot option.)

Getting the firmware loaded

• Download the firmware.
• Create a new folder on the USB drive and name it 'Kobo' without the quotes.
• Now take the firmware file you just obtained and place it into the new folder.
• You can now safely remove the thumb drive or continue to the next step.

Booting from the Thumb Drive

• With the thumb drive connected to your computer reboot the machine.
• Depending on your PC's current boot order the drive should load immediately. if not then you will have to reconfigure your boot device order in the BIOS.
• Select the default option from the Unetbootin menu.

Prepping the SD Card

• Insert the SD Card into your card reader.
• The folder for the card will open. You can immediately close this.
• Right-click the icon for the card located on the desktop and choose Unmount.
• Go to System > Administration > Disk Utility
• Select your SD Card and click Format
• Click Create Partition
• Select Ext3 for Type
• Stick with the default options for the remainder of the process.
• Click Create
• Once the icon stops spinning you know that the formatting process is complete.
• Close the Disk Utility
• You can now remove SD Card from the reader.

Putting the Firmware onto the SD Card

• Place the SD Card into the reader.
• In the file browser note the name of the directory your SD Card resides (e.g. /media/New Volume).
• Navigate to Applications > Accessories > Terminal
• Navigate to the location of your SD Card (e.g. cd /media/New Volume)
• Type in sudo tar xvzf /cdrom/Kobo/kobo-1.8-full-dec6-11am.tgz
• Once complete type exit
• You can now remove the SD. Right-click on the desktop icon and select Unmount.

You can now try out your new firmware upgrade!

[jkkidman]

Using this device is not easy as you think.I still searching features of this device

[kitsullivan]

What can you do if your kobo won't process anymore? After moving books over, it won't process. I have to hold down the power button because the "restart" access hole doesn't work either.

[reress]

I chose to delete the preloaded books and upload the handful of books that can be easily accessed.