How do I format metadata from other fields

[Ubiquity]

Hello there, I'm quite new to Calibre. My question is this, I imported into my library a large bunch (counting hundreds) of epub books, which miss the metadata however, so that author and title were distilled using default import template from file names, and it didn't help much. Now the author is set to unknown author, and the title is in form like

NOVELS 17 - BRADBURY, Ray - Dandelion Wine

Now I'm looking for something (extension?) that would parse the title string, extracts the author puts it to correct form, and leaves the last part as title. The metadata multiedit form does only offer a simple replace using regex in scope of a single field, that's not enough for my case (I need to fix the capitalization also). Thanks for any ideas.

[BetterRed]

In Bulk metadata edit S&R, if you set Mode to Regular expression it provides distinct Source and Target columns - e.g. extract from Title and append to Author.

But if the metadata is embedded in the Epubs, its not too late to extract it from them. Simple test: select a book, go into metadata edit, in the Basic metadata tab, select the Epub in the formats panel (top right) press the lower icon on the left (pencil on pad).

If the metadata changes then you can do the same thing en masse by selecting all the books and then use bulk metadata edit - there's a checkbox labelled: Set metadata (except cover) from the e-book files.

Probably worth taking the time to backup up the library before doing any bulk changes - there's no easy way to rollback.

BR

[Ubiquity]

Thanks for ideas

Originally Posted by BetterRed

But if the metadata is embedded in the Epubs, its not too late to extract it from them. Simple test: select a book, go into metadata edit, in the Basic metadata tab, select the Epub in the formats panel (top right) press the lower icon on the left (pencil on pad).

It changed nothing confirms that the books don't contain any valid metadata.

By the mass search&replace dialog I was able to divide the parts into fields.

Now remains to fix capitalization on authors, which is allcaps for last name. Any feature for it?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Ubiquity

Thanks for ideas


It changed nothing confirms that the books don't contain any valid metadata.

By the mass search&replace dialog I was able to divide the parts into fields.

Now remains to fix capitalization on authors, which is allcaps for last name. Any feature for it?

That can be done on the main (front) screen of Bulk MDE. There are tick boxes galore. You need not set any data values to JUST use the tick boxes.