Series Index Auto Increment

[lgladen]

Pardon if this has been asked and answered, but is there a way to turn off the auto increment of the series index number? I saw the tweaks in preferences, but none of them seemed to match what I wanted - the ability to manage the series in the tag browser and have the index number in existing books not change at all.
(edit - never mind - I just tried it again and the behavior was not as I remembered - Must have been recent changes, or just human error on my part)
(edit #2)
OK, now I see what was different. The example: I have Michael Moorcock's "Runestaff" books in Calibre. Books 2 and 3 were added with the series name "Runestaff". Books 1 and 4 were added (at a later time) with the series name "History of the Runestaff" Renaming the series to remove "History of the" results in books 1 and 4 becoming "Runestaff" 5 and 6, respectively. If there is not a series already in place called "Runestaff", the numbers on the books are left alone, and remain 1 and 4. If this auto-indexing could be turned off (with a new tweak, perhaps?) I would be an extremely happy camper.

[lgladen]

Apologies for bumping the thread, but I just figured out the answer to my own question, and wanted to post it in case anyone else was interested: Kiwidude's "Manage Series" Plugin lets you "lock" the index number down before re-naming the series, keeping the number the same but allowing a name change - exactly what I was looking to do. Thanks Kiwidude!

[kiwidude]

A six day old thread being "bumped" because you found an answer to share with others requires no apology, imho.

I had also written a "Rename Series" plugin that I never published a long time ago to do just the function you have described, but the Manage Series plugin became the official successor with a lot more functionality.

[chaley]

FWIW: you can also do what you want with search/replace. Select the books you wish to change. Use regular expression mode, source = tempate, destination = series, template = "{series} {series_index:|[|]}", search for the series name, enter the new name into the replace box. The test boxes should show you the old series information (foo [12]) and the new series information (bar [12]).

[lgladen]

Thanks, Chaley - always glad to know another way to do it, and I have been using the Bulk editor quite a bit. Any time I can do what I want without switching windows is great!