help req.: compare 2 columns

[RayGoe]

Hi, I could really need some help wit h my "problem":

I have a collection of over 16.000 items (PDF).
In my Calibre management I created additional fields/columns to store relevent information about these documents. For some uniformity and easy search/retrieval i created a template for the document name, this also makes it easier to spot doubles or similar items.

For easy renaming I created a column that uses lookup of other columns to create the name according to my template, so far no issues.

To rename the title to my "template name" I use the edit metadata button and this works fine, still no issues.

When I add new documents, with names not according to my template, they are easily spotted because I use a certain "marker" that isnt common for normal documents so that I can adjust the title to the required template..

Now comes the issue, sometimes in an existing document some value changes, a value that is part of the "template name", so the name has to be updated to the template name (so far so good), sometimes I forget to update, sometimes somebody else updates a field and isnt as technical so the y think little elves will change it automatically.

So once in a while i just update ALL names with the templated name column, and this takes a while, So i thought:"why dont i compare the name and the tmpname with each other and only mark/select those who differ and update these titles?" and thats where I'm stuck.

Help is greatly appreciated. Please overexplain, I'm not dumb but better assume I don't know what or where to do it then to get 50 follow-up questions

[BetterRed]

Save the relevant columns to a CSV file and use a spreadsheet to compare the columns - highlight, discarding, whatever.

BR

[capink]

You are better served with using a composite columns to store you template, which should be updated automatically anytime any other member column is changed.

Composite columns use calibre's Template Language, so for example if you have a template like this:

{authors} - {series} - {title}

Anytime any of the above column changes, it will be reflected automatically in your composite column. To learn more about this, consult the calibre documentation.