creating or altering books in the creation and checking the can't be taken box still results in the book being taken into the player's inventory.

does this function not work? or is there something else to do to get books to not able to be taken, only read and left at location?

thanks for any answers.

It 'could' be a dirty save game. This happens 'sometimes' with vanilla objects that you have already encountered in your game, or if your saving 'versions' of your mod in your save game.

The books original state would be saved in your save game. Overriding your mod.
A save game ALWAYS overrides a mod.

that's not it...

to test a mod, i load the game and at main menu, console coc mycell. there are a few books scattered about all marked for can't be taken. i activate the books one by one, and it starts to read the book (is there a function that you can call in game to do this?), there is always an E at the bottom to take the books.

the only time there is no option to take the book is of course, when you are reading the book from your inventory.

are there any books in game that you can think of which you can not take?

When 'I' check the 'Cant be taken' box', I do not get the option to take the book. I read it and have to exit.

I will test this again, perhaps a patch changed this function a bit.

Yeah, looks like you are right. My bad.
I had some books before that I though you could not take, but they are all 'takable' now.

The only way I could avoid this was to make them an activator, but then I need script to display or perform the skill upgrade, or grant the spell.

trying to make a library. put items in a container. on item add, enable book on bookshelf (instead of using bethesda's book shelf or book pile method, since I want to do this for every single book, not a small stack).

i was going with a fake book to replace the real book, as long as the option can't be taken was working, it would be good enough. enable fake book when real book found to be possessed by player. this would have been too easy, too simple, too clean, i suppose.

now i have to make fake activators to look like books, and players can no longer read the books in the library. so now, this library concept would be purely cosmetic.. : (