[Manichean]

Originally Posted by dkritso109

i am sooooo close i can feel it
now about your question of how it fills in the metadata card you are right it's like this:

Carnivores of Light and Darkness {Title} Foster, Alan Dean {Author(s)}

so my most important issue now is retaining the series names and numbers.

i want:

Foster, Alan Dean - Catechist 02 - Carnivores of Light and Darkness

to look like this:

Catechist 02 - Carnivores of Light and Darkness {Title} Foster, Alan Dean {Author(s)}

So you don't want to have series information in the series field(s), but in the title field? If so, you need to adapt the regexp to include the series info in the title. Or, if you want to have your cake and eat it, you could import the book using the regexp above, which should include the series info in the relevant fields (by the way, you haven't answered the question: does the series field contain the series info?), and then later prepend the series info to the title field using a search & replace.

i totally understand what you mean about authors with multiple names and how it can confuse. i still need to find a way to convert most of my {Author(s)} so that they are in the {Author(s)} fields in the Author Sort format, but the search and replace info doesn't seem to be working. i don't know if i am doing it wrong or not understanding or what. but it doesn't change anything.

I don't want to start inputing them now as Foster, Alan Dean {Author(s)}, when i have 4000 books as Alan Dean Foster {Author(s)}

So you're importing with lastname, firstname(s) in the authors field and want firstname(s) lastname? That's easy: Do a search in the authors field for

([^,]*),\s(.*?)

and replace with

\2 \1