Calibre library management for newbies

[renzii]

Hullo! I've only just got Calibre; don't know what took me so long since I've been enjoying e books for several years. At present my collection is about 4000 items (mostly.lits) and I will be getting a nook Colour e reader in a few days. (I love my big brother!!!) I am presently trying to get all my things in order so I can load them to a micro sd card for my Nook.

My only issue is that I cannot make my Calibre library display my items alphabetically according to authors' surnames. This leads me to much annoyance when I'd like to check which items I have and what's still to be added.
And it's also wasting a lot of time, I could be spending reading!

I'm sure it's just some little thing I haven't learnt yet. I tried searching the forum for an answer to this issue and maybe it is in there and I just don't get it? Thanks in advance for any help.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by renzii

Hullo! I've only just got Calibre; don't know what took me so long since I've been enjoying e books for several years. At present my collection is about 4000 items (mostly.lits) and I will be getting a nook Colour e reader in a few days. (I love my big brother!!!) I am presently trying to get all my things in order so I can load them to a micro sd card for my Nook.

My only issue is that I cannot make my Calibre library display my items alphabetically according to authors' surnames. This leads me to much annoyance when I'd like to check which items I have and what's still to be added.
And it's also wasting a lot of time, I could be spending reading!

I'm sure it's just some little thing I haven't learnt yet. I tried searching the forum for an answer to this issue and maybe it is in there and I just don't get it? Thanks in advance for any help.

Calibre has Preference and Tweak options to control display and sorting (does require consistent data entry )
What you get depends on how you enter the names in the first place

IIRC Calibre defaults to expecting Firstname Lastname on Entry and will automatically sort by Last name (the display is still Fn Ln, but the sort order is by last name).

There is a tweak that changes how Jr. Dr. Phd. ... are handled.
Individual Author names (as in all books by), sorting can be managed by
the 'Manage Authors, right -click option in the Tag Browser.
Individual (Book Level) Author sort is set in the Metadata Editor (and should normally be green if it matches the name in the Manage Authors sort value)

[renzii]

I've tried your fixes and they do work! Yippee!!!

I guess I was assuming that once I had edited and saved the author field, that the author sort field would automatically update. Won't make that mistake again... Also just realised that sometimes I must restart Calibre for the updates to take effect.

Now if I could just get the add books by folder feature to work, I'd be all set! Thanks again.

[transmitthis]

Welcome to the rabbit hole, on the left is a "Python", the right is behind a submenu and straight ahead we have, er no have no idea what that does...

[kacir]

Originally Posted by renzii

I guess I was assuming that once I had edited and saved the author field, that the author sort field would automatically update. Won't make that mistake again...

If you edit many authors in one go, or when you use that extremely powerful Search and Replace stuff, there is way to update all "Author sort" fields at once.
Switch on tag browser - that is that window with Authors, Series, Formats, Publishers ... at the left side. Right-click on authors, select Manage Authors and there is button "Recalculate all author sort values"