Another author sort question

[retro]

I have all the book metadata setup with the author like this:

Author Jane Smith
Author sort Smith, Jane

But I want the Author column in calibre to show LN, FN. When I use the quality check plugin to swap FN LN > LN FN, the author column is sorting by the second word (FN after the swap), so Smith, Jane comes before Jones, Sally.

What is the best way to setup the metadata to have LN, FN in the author column so it sorts by last name alphabetically?

And why, when I swap them, does it add a comma after both names in the author sort field?

TIA

[Synamon]

It hurt my brain to look at the Author column sorted by last name, but displaying FN LN, so I made a custom column for Author LN and populated it with author_sort. It sorts by last name and displays LN, FN and I hide the Author column from view.

[kiwidude]

@retro - see the Note in the FAQ on author sort, has all the instructions you need (no need for a separate custom column).
http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq....es-and-sorting

[retro]

Thanks!
The custom column certainly has appeal since I just spent the last hour removing extra commas from 290 author fields after all my attempts to sort and resort.
I've read the tweak page and it seems pretty straight forward, but I'm dyslexic and will enevitably screw it up the first 3 times. I will definitely try it, but on a smaller test library..

[MartyTX]

Originally Posted by Synamon

It hurt my brain to look at the Author column sorted by last name, but displaying FN LN, so I made a custom column for Author LN and populated it with author_sort. It sorts by last name and displays LN, FN and I hide the Author column from view.

Synamon,

Thanks for the info. Easy to follow and it worked great! For the last couple of months, I tried some complicated fixes to a simple problem. Everything I did actually modified the Calibre Library. Your fix didn't really change anything except for the display of information ... exactly what I wanted. I went ahead and used the same approach for Titles using title_sort.

Now my Calibre screen has the columns I want ... and they display how I want them to look ... with zero impact getting things loaded onto my Nook.

Elegant simplicity. Thanks again!