Deleting Duplicate Books...

Greetings: How can I delete a duplicate entry without deleting the entire entry? For example, I run a scan to see which books I have entered twice, but when I want to delete the extra entry, it seems to delete both? I certainly want to keep one of them.
Thanks.

Deleting one should not delete both.

You can find your duplicate works from your Home page under the Stats/Memes tab. I recently had to clean my list because LT had saved both original selections and then the edited version as well. MarthaJeanne is correct that deleting one should not eliminate the other.

Many thanks to you both. Yet when I search for duplicates and prepare to delete them, I get this message "Delete from all collections?" And when I do that it removes the books from my entire library.

Then maybe you don't have duplicates but the same book in multiple collections? To get rid of a book in one collection but not another use the little house icon on the right and unclick the collection you don't want the book in.

Many thanks aulsmith. Perhaps that is my situation.

>4 jmodica: Yet when I search for duplicates and prepare to delete them, I get this message "Delete from all collections?" And when I do that it removes the books from my entire library.

It may simply be unclear wording. "Delete from all collections?" really means "Delete this (copy of this) book from all collections?" -- It doesn't mean "Delete all copies of this book from all collections?"

I often end up with duplicates in my library because I receive many unfinished review copies, and will latter receive the finished version. When that happens, I delete the unfinished versions from my catalog as I get rid of them. But until I do they look like duplicates in my catalog because I tend to enter things by ISBN. When I delete one, it never deletes the other. They are two separate records according to LT.

>4 jmodica:

Yes, that's working as intended.

It is deleting one of your duplicates from all of the collections in which it appears. The other instances of the book will still be present.

When you open a book you own there is a box on the main page with information about your copy. If you own more than one copy there will be a section at the bottom of that box about other copies you have entered of that work. If there is not a section like that, you only have one copy of the book entered.

I currently have 294 duplicates. It there any way to have LibraryThing automatically mark one for deletion or go ahead and arbitrarily delete one? Otherwise, is there a way to export all records to Excel and reimport them intact after deleting the duplicates in Excel?

Automatically? No. If you'd edited one record but not hte other, it wouldn't know. Beyond that, the base creed here is that User Data is Sacred. So no one will touch another's (non spam) data. However, you can do a mass delete using the power edit feature. That's the lightning bolt icon while in your catalogue. Click that button, click the third small tab that says delete, select the books to go, verify you've got the right ones, then click delete books.

Export and then Import? No. That's a long awaited feature still.

>1 jmodica: I agree that deleting one should not delete both, just make sure you save the first one.
so how DO I delete one book of which I do not have duplicates ?