Manipulating Catalogue Outputs

[LMF]

Firstly, I gotta say Calibre is far and away the best free, open-source software I've encountered - so a big thanks to those who put the time and effort into developing it.

Secondly, I'm not sure where exactly I should post my question so feel free to move it if there's somewhere more appropriate.

Basically what I want to be able to do is use my csv output from the catalogue and manipulate it to a format that allows me to import my book list into another program that I use for research. I'm presuming this is possible but my programming skills at the moment are non existent so if I explain what I want to be able to do in a bit more detail I'm hoping someone can tell me 1) whether it is actually doable, 2) whether its something someone like me with no programming experience can fumble my way through, and 3) if so, point me in the right direction of the information I'll need to start working it out.

I use a program called TheBrain to link pieces of information (thoughts) together. It can import thoughts via excel or word outlines etc but how thoughts are linked together is dependent on the structure of the file.

Using Catalogue the excel file I get now is basically: author, title, tags, genre etc all in the one row but what I need is to be able to put them on different rows and also different columns where needed.

For example: In Excel:

Thought A

Thought B

Thought C

Thought D

Becomes in TheBrain:
Thought A -----> thought B -----> thought C

thought B------> thought D

So basically I want to be able to manipulate the excel file a number of ways to produce each of these results in excel:

Author A

Title 1, Author A

Title 2, Author A

Author B

Title 3, Author B

Title 4, Author B

etc

For books with multiple authors it gets a bit more complicated. I'm undecided (and therefore not worried either way) if it lists the book under each authors name individually or if it combines them to become:

Author A & Author B

Title 1, Author A & Author b

But note in the title line that all authors need to be listed even if the title is under an individual author, for example:

Author A

Title 1, Author A & Author B

Author B

Title 1, Author A & Author B

Other example of what I need are:

Genre

Title, Author

title, author

etc (of all books in that genre)

Tag

Title, Author

Title, Author

etc (Of all books with that tag)

Book Series

Title, Author

Title, Author

(etc of all books in that series)

That's as far as I can tell all that I need. If you're wondering why I need the title listed as "Title, Author" it's because of the way TheBrain works on import mainly. If I import a thought that is already in Thebrain it will link to it rather than create another identical thought if I specify. So this just stops the doubling up of thoughts or linking to thoughts with the same name that aren't meant to be linked. It's also why it doesn't matter that authors and titles etc will be in multiple of the examples I've listed above - when I add them they won't be added multiple times just the extra context (links to other thoughts) will be added.

So yeah, any thoughts on whether this is doable (and learnable ) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
LMF

[theducks]

Moderator Notice
Moved. This did not appear to be Developer related as per the sticky