Copy Metadata to Clipboard

[EmilThelonius]

Hi Calibre-Community,

I have a question to which I couldn't find an answer in this forum (or online) – maybe someone knows an easy way to do this (hoping, hoping).

I use calibre for several years now to organize my academic books and research articles. Now I try to find an easy way to copy the metadata of a certain book in a spezial order.
My idea is something like this: I select a certain book and when I click a button, I copy "[author last-name], [first-name]: [Name of the book], [City], [Date]." to the clipboard.

Is there any way to do this? (Within calibre, or with a plugin?) Or is there a way to write such a little plugin for a noob in programing like me?

Thank you all for your great work! I really love calibre

[dickloraine]

You could make a custom column constructed from other columns. Then you could simply copy its contents. To make such a column, calibre uses a simple template syntax. Search here for examples or look it up in the calibre manual. It should be really easy in your case

[BetterRed]

In the following screen shot I pressed 'I' on the book I wanted, swiped the details with the mouse, hit Ctrl+C to copy it, Win+N to pop a new ON note. and Ctrl+V to paste.



Added : you set the order in which columns are displayed in Preferences->Look and Feel->Book Details

BR

[BetterRed]

Or Mark the book(s) with Ctrl+M, show Marked Books with Shift+Ctrl+M, then create a CSV Catalogue (Ctrl+U), open the CSV in your favourite CSV File Viewer. Catalogue create can be accessed via the Convert tool

I have customised my keyboard shortcuts so your settings may be different or absent. Use Preferences->Keyboard to customise.

Added : you set the order in which columns are written in Create Catalogue->CSV and XML options - you have to slide the column names up and down the list with the mouse Ψ²

BR

[copyrite]

Originally Posted by EmilThelonius

an easy way to copy the metadata of a certain book in a special order

I do this frequently in a rather tedious fashion. Thanks for the suggestions of a way to do this easier.

[EmilThelonius]

Thank you all for the great help!
I went with the first possibility by dickloraine because I think (once set up) it is the fastest way to get the citation! And it almost works

I made a new "custom column constructed from other columns" with the code:

{author_sort} ({pubdate}): {title:||,} {series:|in: |,} {series_index:||.} {publisher}.

So that it shows for example:

Hyppolite, Jean (Jan 1969): Studies on Marx and Hegel, Basic Books.

That fits my needs perfectly!

The strange thing is, that it is not shown correctly in the column in calibre –*just when I click (one time) on the selected book within the column a window opens where I can change the code –*and there the preview is perfectly right. In the plain column the positions are mixed up. Maybe the code needs to be fixed? Or it is a bug? Or the problem relies on the format of (f.e.) the title, where punctuations, commas, lines may appear. The mix up is quite random and I could not track down if there is any continuity to it....

Thank you again!!

[BetterRed]

@EmilThelonius - using pubdate in templates can also be problematic, see this recent thread ==>> Calibre 2.70 - {pubdate} is 1 year off.

BR

[EmilThelonius]

Thank you for the Info BetterRed!

It seems to work in my case.