[Old Thread] Regex "FN LN" to "LN, FN" & reverse?

[unboggling]

@penguinaka, no problem. Like I said, it looks awesome, but not awesome enough to get me to emulate a MS OS. I've avoided MS OS's and MS software except for Office for over 3 years and hated the OS's long before that. I'm pretty busy too, but if/when I have time I'll look to see if I can do anything with it. Good luck on your clinicals.

[RolandD]

Originally Posted by Mixx

You need to go to "Edit Metadata in Bulk" (context menu), go to the second tab "Search and Replace", there you select "Search Field" to be "authors" and (in some versions of Calibre) put the result back into "authors". "Search mode": Regular expression. Then for

FN LN --> LN, FN

Search for:

(.*) (.*)

Replace with:

\2, \1

LN, FN --> FN LN

Search for:

(.*), (.*)

Replace with:

\2 \1

You see at the bottom what's gonna happen to your selected items and can even test your own cases.

If you like what you are doing, you can save these cases, too. I actually call them "FN LN --> LN, FN" and "LN, FN --> FN LN". Then you just pull them down, as needed.

Regards, Mixx

Just saved me several hours of work. Thank you, so much!!!!!!

[greenwink]

Mixx -

You are a god send. I've been trying to do this very same thing for the last 4 hours.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[unboggling]

@greenwink, this is an old thread. The easiest way to swap author-name components is with the optional plugin Quality Check, under the Fix menu, Swap Author command, which doesn't require messing with regular expressions in Edit Metadata Search & Replace.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by greenwink

You are a god send. I've been trying to do this very same thing for the last 4 hours.

You are responding to a 2 year old post that is at least 100 version behind the current version of calibre. Please don't do this in the future.

It is possible for folks to follow instructions here and not achieve what they wish in the long run.

Not knowing what you want, and ignoring the fact that this thread as possibilities that may be of benefit to some folks, the fact is the vast majority looking for something similar would be better off reading this section of the FAQ first: How does calibre manage author names and sorting? and after reviewing that section, reviewing the Quality Check plugin may help.

Good Luck.