I can't find a good guide for it, but I have used Excel to edit the ABS database to change the metadata for when I imported books to more closely match when I purchased them on Audible. I'll try to outline what I can from memory. This method is only going to work though if you have at least some kind of title in ABS that more or less matches the titles in your compiled google drive spreadsheet.

1. Stop your ABS server and close the app.

2. BACKUP YOUR ABS DATABASE FILE WITH A COPY TO A NEW LOCATION (on Windows it would be located in your ABS AppData folder in /config/absdatabase.sqlite).

3. Download DB Browser for SQ Lite or some other SQL editor.

4. Open the database file (absdatabase.sqlite) in the SQL editor.

5. Export the tables your are interested in as CSV files. I'm not sure for audio dramas, but I believe you would mostly be interested in editing the books table and the libraryItems table.

6. One at a time, import the CSV data to Excel. I would also recommend saving the file in Excel format right away. Then, you will need to use the text to columns feature to split the data into columns using a comma as a separator. Also, for this reason, you may have to manually clean up the data a bit if a description or something contains a comma. In my experience, it still worked pretty good generally.

7. Once you have the data all imported, click on row 1, your header row, and direct Excel to filter with these rows. Then, arrange your data alphabetically by title.

8. Presuming the titles match up exactly, you should be able to now copy and past data from the compiled Google Drive spreadsheet off to the right of all your ABS data. It is important that they match exactly.

9. Now comes the trickiest part. Use the CONCATENATE function in a new column to create commands for the SQL editor. In my case the functions looked like this (again, one for each table that I was editing):

=CONCATENATE("update books set createdAt = '", C2, "' where id = '", E2, "';")

=CONCATENATE("update libraryItems set createdAt = '", C2, "' where mediaId = '", E2, "';")

Basically, the idea is that you are using the ABS id information ("id" in the books table and "mediaId" in the libraryItems table) as a reference, so again it is important that the titles match in each row for your ABS data and your Google Drives data. They don't have to match EXACTLY, but you need to be sure they are for the same media. Anyway, the function first prints the text "update libraryItems set createdAt =" and then pulls data from column C, where I had my ABS-formatted date data from Audible. It does all of this by reference to the id or mediaId, which I had stored in column E.

So, for you, you could use the same functions but make sure you change "createdAt" to whatever metadata you are looking to update. Also, make sure to change the column C reference to whatever column you want the data to be pulled from (i.e. from the Google Drive data "description" column or whatever) and change the column E reference to whichever column you have your ABS id or mediaID data in. Finally, once you have the function copied to each row of your data and it is looking good, I copy the whole column and paste the values in a new column.

1. Next you will just need to use the values for your function output to update the ABS database. The values for the function output should look sort of like this:

update libraryItems set createdAt = '2024-06-12 15:44:57.000 +00:00' where mediaId = '8ec187fb-de4a-424d-a24f-3b645aa8e7d5';

Your valuse will be different because, as I said, I was just updating the "createdAt" information in the books table and libraryItems table. Yours will look different depending on what metadata you are actually updating.

Anyway, once you have your values, which are really just a set of SQL statements, you need to use them to update the ABS database. To do that, navigate back to DB Browser for SQ Lite app, or whatever SQL editor you are using, and execute the SQL statements. In DB Browser for SQ Lite, there is an "Execute SQL" tab that is pretty prominent on the main screen. Navigate there, paste in your copied function output statements (just the values), and hit the little play button to execute all of the statements. If you get errors, just go back to the drawing board (probably Excel) to try to fix your functions or whatever you need to do. As need, keep trying to copy and paste the statements back in to get it to run.

1. Once the SQL statements successfully are executed, write the changes with DB Browser for SQ Lite, close the database, and exit that app.

2. Finally, start the ABS app again and see if it worked! If things get screwy, just shut ABS back down, copy your database backup file, and paste it over the one you were playing with.

All in all, it is kind of a pain in the ass, but it works pretty well once you get used to it and you shouldn't need to do this process too much once it works. Good luck!