Alphabet tabs

[silverraven]

I have been using Calibre for a while, love it, but am still very much a newbie. Sorry if this is a stupid question! Once I get a couple hundred of books into Calibre there is alot of scrolling to get from the top of the list of books to the bottom. (yeah, I know, I'm a whiner! ) Is there a way to click a letter and have calibre jump down to, say, N authors? Then click another letter and have it jump back up to G? I've never changed the way my Calibre looks, and honestly dont' even know if it is possible, so I don't even know if this is a hidden feature or not.
Thanks for the help!
S

[speakingtohe]

A lot of shortcut keys are just the letter, m=merge etc. So probably not. Although if you type too fast when editing a column that has drop down lists it will often just go hopping down to the next matching entry so I could be wrong.

Helen

[kovidgoyal]

Type (in the search box)

author:~^A
for authors with first name starting with A

author:" A"
for authors with middle/last name starting with A

[silverraven]

See, I knew there had to be an easy way! Thank you very much!
S

[kovidgoyal]

An even easier way is to use the Tag Browser. Right click on it and select "Change sub-categorization scheme"->By first letter

That should the split up your list of authors into groups by first letter (i you have more than 100 authors). Simply click on a letter to show all authors with last name starting with that letter.

[silverraven]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

An even easier way is to use the Tag Browser. Right click on it and select "Change sub-categorization scheme"->By first letter

That should the split up your list of authors into groups by first letter (i you have more than 100 authors). Simply click on a letter to show all authors with last name starting with that letter.

I must be doing something wrong, I am getting the authors by first name, instead of last. What tag does it go by, maybe I have something wrong.
S

[kovidgoyal]

Depends on how you have your author and author_sort fields setup. It only works if you have author firstname lastname and author sort lastname firstname

[silverraven]

It only works if you have author firstname lastname and author sort lastname firstname

That is the way I have mine. Could it be that I have the authors name -firstname lastname in the tag field?
S

[kovidgoyal]

That searches the author sort field.

[silverraven]

Huh, wonder why it's not working for me. Must be the gremlins in my computer! I will look at it again tomorrow, thanks for your help!
S

[kovidgoyal]

what version of calibre are you on?

[silverraven]

8.17 Should I upgrade?
S

[kovidgoyal]

No, that's fine.

[theducks]

@Silverraven

Do you have a custom tweak set for sort to use in Tag browser?

Is the Author_sort in Manage Authors correct (the one in the Metadata can override this)?

[silverraven]

Do you have a custom tweak set for sort to use in Tag browser?

Since I have no idea what this is I'm thinking no? I"m way below newbie status on figuring some of this stuff out!! Which is why I love this program so much, you can be a complete dummy and it still works perfectly.
I haven't really changed anything in calibre, except for adding plug ins. In my Tag field I do have the authors name as, for example, Isaac Asimov.
Honestly this isnt' that important, I was just kinda curious. I thought maybe there was way to change settings to have a little line of ABC tabs show up under the list of books or something. I just thought it would be kinda cool to be able to click on a letter and it auto scroll down that section. I do appreciate everyones help with this though, everyone is always so helpful on this forum.
Thanks everyone for the help!
S