author sort to author(s) swaps FN and LN

[imans314]

When adding books to calibre (dragging from folder to calibre) the author sort is fine Last name, First name.
But the author(s) field alway says First name, Last name.

Is there a way so my author(s) field will be Last name, First name?

[theducks]

It has a Comma between Fn and Ln?

[imans314]

Yes, sorry forgot to say that.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by imans314

Yes, sorry forgot to say that.

I think those were embeded metadata

You will need to remove those using the Metadata Editor (Bulk mode) Search and replace

REGEX Mode
search
(.+?),\s*(.+?)

replace
\1 \2

[imans314]

Thanx, that works.

But I think the way I used to do it is faster:
select 1 book
Edit metadata
click on Manage authors
click on Copy all author sort value to author
Ok
OK

I was hoping for a solution when adding the books, it was done automatic.
It is probably a lot harder, if not impossible.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by imans314

Thanx, that works.

But I think the way I used to do it is faster:
select 1 book
Edit metadata
click on Manage authors
click on Copy all author sort value to author
Ok
OK

I was hoping for a solution when adding the books, it was done automatic.
It is probably a lot harder, if not impossible.

Fn, Ln is not at all normal
Ln, Fn is a Normal option if you don't like Fn Ln <no comma

The Quality check PI can flip selected, reformat initials on selected, but does not fix weird stuff lik commas where they are not expected

[imans314]

I now Ln, Fn is normal. That's how my books are sorted.
But when adding books to Calibre the Author(s) field is most of the time Fn Ln, and I want those Ln, Fn.

I will have a look at the The Quality check PI.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by imans314

I now Ln, Fn is normal. That's how my books are sorted.
But when adding books to Calibre the Author(s) field is most of the time Fn Ln, and I want those Ln, Fn.

I will have a look at the The Quality check PI.

The item you want is under FIX

[imans314]

Found it!
Thanx.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by imans314

I was hoping for a solution when adding the books, it was done automatic.
It is probably a lot harder, if not impossible.

- Ad as many books as desired, not caring about how Authors field is populated.
- Then type to the search bar
authors:","
and you will get all authors that contain comma character. Now you can select them and in bulk edit apply the replacement suggested in the post no. 4.

You can also search for all authors that contain more than one comma using following regular expression, so you do not apply wrong search and replace regex to a coma separated list of authors.
So, search for
authors:"~,[^,]*,"
when you get list of books with multiple authors in a form of comma separated list, apply following search and replace strings in the Bulk Edit dialog:
Search mode: regular expression
Search field: authors
Search for: ,
Replace with: &

When typing to the search bar you have five options

king
You can simply type any string into a search line at the top and Calibre will search all columns for given string (or just columns you set in preferences). The above string "king" will return books from Stephen Hawking but also a book that has word "king" anywhere in title or description or ...

Authors:king
searches for a king substring anywhere in the author name, and returns books with authors such as Stephen King or Hawking

Authors:"king"
The same as above, but the search string might contain spaces and keywords such as OR AND ... without OR, AND and other keywords having special function

Authors:"=king"
Doesn't search for substring, but for complete string, so it will not return Hawking but only books with complete author name "king" or "King"

Authors:"~king"
Searches for a regular expression.
Regular expressions are VERY powerful tools.
For example from my example above:
authors:"~,[^,]*,"
Search for a comma ,
followed by any character that isn't comma [^,]
repeated as many times as possible *
followed by a comma again ,


You can type complex expressions when searching, such as
authors:king AND title:it
or
authors:"stephen king" OR authors:"king, stephen"


Calibre is an extremely powerful tool where you can make complex queries and then bulk edit the data using regular expressions, or you can generate complex columns automatically built from other metadata using regular expressions and/or a powerful language with functions and ...
Calibre is a database and has tools similar to other databases.
Yet, it can be used without special knowledge.