[Huisie]

Your approach to layout and punctuation makes it a little difficult to get an understanding of your issue:

but it seems with authors having a first name and a last name, series number,and tag data, calibre places them in no particular order.

i have tried tweaks,"none" "invert" author 0 title 0 series 0 i have clicked on every possible button such as manage authors sort, sort author .

If I understand you correctly, you are struggling with the author column in the book list and how authors are displayed.


IDEA 1:
The first step to take might be sorting out the file names before importing into Calibre.
Using your example:

e02 alan bennett,then e03 alan bennett

Calibre is identifying "e02" and "e03" as part of the author name.
This would indicate a haphazard naming structure - either your book naming setup or the existing metadata isn't uniform.

I also had several thousand books to add to Calibre from many different sources. The condition of everything from layout to naming structure ran the gamut from execrable to excellent.

I used a renaming program (there are plenty available online) to get my book naming in order. My layout was:

author (last name, first name) - series (name and number) - title.extension

Or, using one of your authors:

Woods, Stuart - Holly Barker 01 - Orchid Beach.epub

Before adding them to Calibre I set preferences:

Preferences -> Adding Books -> untick "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name"

This means Calibre will get its naming info from your file names rather than the file metadata (which might be a mess or, at least, not what you want).

Then you need to choose a regular expression to match your file naming structure - Calibre has several built-in, which will likely do for your needs.
Just below where you enter a regular expression is a built-in test area for these.
You can make up any names you like - just remember to include an extension for your test name or it won't work.

IDEA 2:
Once you have your books in good order, you might want to run a few tests before adding them to your Calibre library.
An easy way to do this is to a use text editor (Windows comes with Notepad) and create a few test files.
You can right-click in an clear area of a open window or your desktop and choose:

"New -> Text Document..."

Create a few and give them names matching several of your books - pick book titles that are currently giving you difficulty.
Add those to Calibre and try out a few settings to see what works best.
This way, you are only affecting dummy files and you can have as many "do-overs" as you like.

As you can see, I'm still new to this program and feeling my way.
I've found this a quick 'n dirty way to get a feel for some of the functions that make my head hurt.

IDEA 3:
I noticed that some of your authors are in "first_name last_name" format, some are "last_name, first_name".
In Calibre settings there is a tweak that can help:

Preferences -> Tweaks -> Author sort name algorithm

The default is "invert" - change this to "comma"
This enables Calibre to tell the difference between the two and add the author details correctly to the library.


Good luck with this and I hope my suggestions help.
Hopefully, one of the more experienced members will look this over and correct any erroneous advice on my part.