[chaley]

Originally Posted by silverraven

I had to laugh at this. Yes, if I can find the hard way, I usually do!!
Let's see if I can describe how I would like both readers to look when choosing books. I would like to have main folders that are the letters of the alphabet. Then under that I would like the authors. Then I would like to have series title, then the number of the book and name of book. For example:
H
Harlequin Presents Aug 2010
01 Snowbound
02 Bride for Tonight
Harlequin Presents Sept 2010
01 Lucky at Love
02 Love's Embrace
I
Greg Isles
Turning Angel
Dead Sleep
J
Lisa Jackson
The Morning After
Iris Johansen
Dark Summer
Dead Aim

Does that explain it better? The above listed method works on mom's Astak, but if there are easier methods I'm all ears!! I had no idea you could use the custom columns for sorting when sending to device. I have so much to learn about this program. And I have to figure out how to do this for a Sony 600 too.
S

I think I have it.

First, I suggest that you name the Harlequin Presents series slightly differently, so that they sort correctly. For example, Harlequin Presents Sept 2010 could be Harlequin Presents 2010-09. This way they will sort in year order. You also might want to shorten Harlequin Presents to something like HP, so that it fits in the reader's display better.

Second, put whatever you use for the HP series into the series column. Number them appropriately.

Now create a new custom column with the type 'Column built from other columns'. I called it #comp2, but you can call it whatever you want. Put the following into its template:

{series:lookup(.,series,author_sort)}

This will get the value from the series column, if there is one. If there isn't, then it gets the author.

For the Astak, use the following for the save template:

{#comp2[0]}/{#comp2}/{series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}

This gets the first letter from the #comp2 field (author or series), adds a slash, adds the entire #comp2 field (again, author or series), adds a slash, adds the series index if there is one, then the title. The result would be

H/HP 2010-09/01 - Lucky at Love
J/Jackson, Lisa/The Morning After

Remember to change #comp2 to whatever you used when you created the custom column. Note that it is possible to use the author name instead of the author sort, but it requires creating another custom column.

For the sony, there are several choices. The easiest would be to make a collection for each value in #comp2. To do this, add #comp2 to the list of fields to make collections from in the device plugin preferences. Take out series and tags.

If you want the sony to show the series number with the title, then create a plugboard with the following content:

format: device-db
device: PRS505
template: {series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}
destination: title

This will make the sony menus display 03 - Title if a book has a series index.

I am away for a while, so won't be able to help more. I hope others in the forum will pick up.

Good luck.