How can I populate a user column with the second author in author list?

[Jobasha]

Hi!

I have a bunch of books where the second author (and any subsequent authors) represent the translator of the book. What I want to do is to automatically populate a user field called translator (which is of the same type as author) with all the authors except the first one.

I thought I could do this with 'search and replace' and regex, but it seems the regex works on each author independently

Any help would be appreciated!

[capink]

Try using this template:

{authors:sublist(1,0, & )}

[Jobasha]

Thanks for the response!

So I believe I would use this when creating a custom column built from other columns.

The problem is I only want to apply it to a subset of items, and I think I can't change an item manually with this type column.

[capink]

Calibre search and replace supports templates. So, choose the subset of books you want, and in calibre's search and replace:

search mode: regular expression
mode: replace field
search field: {template}
Template: {authors:sublist(1,0, & )}
search for: (.+)
replace with: \1
destination field: your destination field

[Jobasha]

Thanks Capink!

That works perfectly.