[DMcCunney]

I just imported 516 volumes into Calibre. They were in Palm PDB format, and originated as HTML that I converted to the Plucker format viewable on a Palm PDA with the Plucker viewer. Calibre happily converted them all to ePub.

The files comprise two series. One series has file names of the form "XXX <Title>", where XXX is a 3 digit number starting with 001.

The second has file has file names of the form "AAXXX <Title>", where AA is a two character prefix and XXX is a 3 digit number starting with 001.

The naming convention was needed to indicate series order on the Palm device. In ePub, it's not needed.

I'd like to do bulk renaming to strip the prefix from the volumes and just leave <title>, since Series order is handled in Calibre metadata and used by the viewer on the Android device I use for eBook viewing.

Is there a Calibre function or plugin that can do this? I could export the files and do it on the OS level with a utility, then re-import, but that makes preserving series order problematic. With the original names, I could create a virtual library, sort by name, and tell Calibre to automatically generate Series numbers beginning from 1 and get the correct numbering. Without the prefixes, it appears I'd have to do it manually, and I don't want to update series data one by one for 516 volumes. If I tell Calibre to auto-generate numbers, order is based on the time the file was actually added, which may not be the order for the series. (I discovered that after import, and it was why I had to create a virtual library and sort by name to get the correct sequence. While the volumes were imported in series order, the volumes were not all added in the order they were imported.)

I don't see anything in the Calibre manual about this, and no extant plugins appear to do it. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance,
______
Dennis