The problem occurs if you found and took the book " The wild elves" BEFORE accepting quest to find it.

Quest giver (librarian orc in Collage) sends me to find the book, but it is already in my inventory. Yet there are no dialog options to return the book. The quest marker leads me to an empty chest in a dungeon i have visited already.

No one else having this problem? Any solutions?

Had the same issue.
Buying the book had no effect.
Went into Ravenscar Hollow.
(On the north coast a bit east of Raven's Tear and Steepfall Burrow or NW of Solitude.)
An arrow then showed, even though that quest wasn't active.
A chest there has Wild Elves.
Upon taking it the a message popped up to take it to the quest giver.

The solution for this would be to use the setstage console command. I am having this same problem as well, but I haven't been able to find the quest ID for this particular quest. Anyone know it, by chance?

Same exact issue here. I found the book before the quest was offered, ended up being given the quest and couldn't just hand him the book and get the reward. Going back to that dungeon yields a chest without the book (I was originally thinking "crap, now i'm going to have two books and he'll only take one and I'll be stuck with an extra copy I can't drop).

This quest needs fixing.

Anyone figured out the quest ID for that stage of the quest? I know there's a help console command for finding out the ID of items, spells, and perks, but I don't believe that works for quests. Any ideas? I haven't been able to find the quest ID at the uesp site.

Got the same problem, only my book was from the Moss Mother cave. I would've never gone inside if the DAMN NPC outside hadn't asked me to save his friends' corpses - now I'm stuck too.

The questID console command to find IDs does work, but there're so many IDs the console basically stops paging up after a while.

All you have to do is use the console command to drop the book, and pick it back up. It will then register that you found it.
Annoying yes..but it works, I just did it for the "Legendary Scourge" book.

I went back to where the book was located when I found it (quest marker showed it)..and dropped it...but I don't think it's necessary to do that.


Try this in the console:

player.drop 0001AD18 1

Then pick it back up.

Keep in mind that code there is only for the OP's book. If you are having the same bug with a different book, look your book up here: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Console_Item_Codes_%28Skyrim%29

This doesn't work for me or my roommate. Really, the best solution is just to advance the quest using the setstage command, but nobody in the entire world seems to know the quest ID for this quest. Does anyone know how to find out the quest ID's for quests? How are quest ID's discovered?

The same thing happens with the "Children of the Sky" quest. Really [censored] annoying on the console, but I'll live.

Can someone confirm if this is fixed in 1.4?

Nah. No progress on this one in 1.4.

Also similar problem in " Speak to Greta about going to the temple of Divines" (if you have amulet of talos allready) is still there.

According to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Fetch_me_that_Book! it's either MGR20 or MGR20B

Not fixed in 1.5.
Got bunch of misc-quests in my journal that are broken just because I found the quest-item before accepting the quest. It's nothing game-braking, but very annoying and totally ruins the fun of exploring. Starting to doubt it will ever be fixed.

Just use setstage MGR20 200
or if that doesnt work use setstage MGR20B 200 to complete the quest, then use player.removeitem 1ad18 1 to remove 'wild elves' fro your inventory.