Series in Title

[Feanor]

I own a Kindle 3, and used a metadata plugboard to add the series and number to the title on the Kindle, in the format Series - [00] - Title, when adding from Calibre.

I recently had a HDD failure and lost my calibre install - being left with the books on the Kindle from which to recover. I have connected the Kindle and added the books from there to the library on a fresh install of Calibre, but all the books are added with the titles being as above, and with the series and number fields unpopulated.

Is there a way to extract this information from the title field (removing it in the process) and add it to the series and number fields in a bulk fashion?

Any advice is greatly appreciated - I would rather not have to do this by hand on 100s of books. I am also well aware that in future I should back up my Calibre install elsewhere.

[Manichean]

In the bulk edit metadata screen, there's a search & replace option. What you want is possible using the regular expression search mode. You'll need to do two passes: In the first one, place 'series_name [index]' in the series field. This will set the series_name and series_index of the books. In the second, remove everything you don't want from the title field.
There's a tutorial on regular expressions available, should you need it.

[Feanor]

That's great - I've read the guide on Regular Expressions too (which, by the way, is very well written), but I still can't quite get it to work.

Choosing Search Mode = Regular expression
Choosing Search Field = Title
Inputting series_name [index] in the search for field
Leaving replace with blank
Choosing Destination Field = series

Results in the series field being populated with the whole title as it is (Series [index] - Title), and not setting the series number field.

I must be being a bit dim, but where am I going wrong?

Thank you for your help.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Feanor

Inputting series_name [index] in the search for field
Leaving replace with blank
Choosing Destination Field = series

This won't work for several reasons:

1. You'll need to input a regular expression into the search field. While, of course, the string you gave is a regular expression, it doesn't do what you think it does- that would imply Calibre understanding the semantics of what the fields contain, which it doesn't. I'll try to work out an example later, I don't have the time now, but for the moment, as a hint: You'll want to use backreferences and use the dashes as delimiting characters.
2. Replacing with a blank text effectively deletes the information from the field. This is what you want to do for the second pass. In the first pass, you'll want to fill the series field with some information. See backreferences above

[Rob557]

Originally Posted by Feanor

... I still can't quite get it to work. ...

I had come across this unresolved posting, as one of the few postings on this issue, when trying to resolve the same issue of removing the series info from the title. The following link identifies a new thread that provides an effective alternative where theducks helped me resolve the problem by instead taking a pragmatic structural approach: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=187951

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Rob557

I had come across this unresolved posting, as one of the few postings on this issue, when trying to resolve the same issue of removing the series info from the title. The following link identifies a new thread that provides an effective alternative where theducks helped me resolve the problem by instead taking a pragmatic structural approach: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=187951

Manichean is the one who managed to beat REGEX understanding in to my thick skull