Custom Column for date book is added to the library?

[idiom6]

Sometimes I want to browse by the oldest in my library or browse what was added during a specific time frame, but the default #date column changes if I download metadata or count pages/words, and so forth, and #last_modified changes if I update anything else.

This seems like a basic database feature (when was this book first acquired?) but I confess I haven't been able to find an answer. How would I do this so I could browse books I bought during the holiday season two years ago?

[capink]

Calibre has two builtin date columns:

• last_modified: This is the column you talking about that gets updated whenever a book is modified.
• date: also called timestamp. This is the date the book is added to calibre and is never modified automatically by calibre. You can modify it yourself if you choose to, but calibre does not touch it.

If you want to have more granular control over date columns, check out the Last Modified plugin. It allows you to assign different custom date columns to certain events.

[idiom6]

date: also called timestamp. This is the date the book is added to calibre and is never modified automatically by calibre. You can modify it yourself if you choose to, but calibre does not touch it.

That field updates whenever I go back to try to download missing metadata for older imports.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by idiom6

That field updates whenever I go back to try to download missing metadata for older imports.

I would suspect that you looking a column showing last_modified timestamp not the date timestamp. In the sample image, I ran the Count Pages plugin on the 3 selected books and the date did not change but the last modified did. The second image is the configuration for some of my columns.

[idiom6]

I'll have to take a look, and failing that, I'll look into that plugin. Thanks for the help!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by idiom6

Sometimes I want to browse by the oldest in my library or browse what was added during a specific time frame, but the default #date column changes if I download metadata or count pages/words, and so forth, and #last_modified changes if I update anything else.

This seems like a basic database feature (when was this book first acquired?) but I confess I haven't been able to find an answer. How would I do this so I could browse books I bought during the holiday season two years ago?

{date} is the normal Date column (names starting with # are user created)
That date is the date Calibre created the record (usually when a book is FIRST added). Unless you repurpose that column, you can sort and view by that.