Editing Book Titles

[cga1982]

Is there a more efficient way of editing book titles than going through each book individually?
For example, I want to change the month in the book title to a short form (so that instead of December it shows Dec).
I know that I can use the Search and Replace (if I had many, many Decembers to change but usually there are less than 10 books for each moth to change.)
Thank-you.

[JSWolf]

You cannot change book titles other then one by one.

What is wrong with your book titles that they need changing?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by cga1982

Is there a more efficient way of editing book titles than going through each book individually?
For example, I want to change the month in the book title to a short form (so that instead of December it shows Dec).
I know that I can use the Search and Replace (if I had many, many Decembers to change but usually there are less than 10 books for each moth to change.)
Thank-you.

RULE #1 for Calibre. NEVER EVER use the OS to change a file or folder name in a Calibre Library. What is in the GUI (database), MUST stay in lockstep with the Library files and folders. Only Calibre knows where it put a file.

I take your question on is really: 'How to format column values'
For dates (in date type columns):
Preferences: Tweaks: take a moment and read the descriptions of each. There are some others you might want to use

ID: gui_pubdate_display_format
------
BTW before you start: backup tweaks,py found in:
C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\calibre
Just in case...

for more formatting, like Alignment: right click the column heading in the main GUI.

[cga1982]

Hi Jon.
I just like my months to have three letters - I'm a bit strange that way.
I also have to convert formats to my "standard" date format. I have to go and change 2026-01-17 to Jan 17 2026 to keep my date formats uniform.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by cga1982

Hi Jon.
I just like my months to have three letters - I'm a bit strange that way.
I also have to convert formats to my "standard" date format. I have to go and change 2026-01-17 to Jan 17 2026 to keep my date formats uniform.

It is rare there are DATES in titles. Calibre is a Database Catalog.
BTW mucking with titles also hinders Metadata fetches from lookup sites

Each TYPE of data has a column for that value.
common columns with Dates:
Date ( the date the entry was first added to calibre)
pubdate (when published)
(normally hidden) Last_Modified (Any change about that books entry bumps this)
While we are talking about dates (and series indexes):
NEITHER accept ranges (Jan-Feb, 1-5. ) These are single value type data. Have a plan to work around by having a standard notation, like: First month, series begin.series end [1.05] (1-5 always use 2 digits after decimal. and yes, 10,20 ... break. THERE ARE ALWAYS EXCEPTIONS )
[FWIW I have just 2 books with December AS a word in their Title]

Many folk have other Custom columns for things like Last read, Edited (clean up the formatting )

The reason FOR custom columns so you do not need to misuse a standard column (that may have unwanted side effects)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by cga1982

Is there a more efficient way of editing book titles than going through each book individually?
For example, I want to change the month in the book title to a short form (so that instead of December it shows Dec).
I know that I can use the Search and Replace (if I had many, many Decembers to change but usually there are less than 10 books for each moth to change.)
Thank-you.

I'm guessing these "books" are periodicals, academic journals (e.g. The Lancet, IEEE Proceedings) and/or magazines (e.g. New Yorker, Granta).

If they are are, I'll tell you how I handle them.

BR

[Comfy.n]

hmm, if the files contain the month info in their filenames, I figure you could switch calibre preference to temporarily read metadata from filenames.

And use a file renaming utility that can do 'Replace' before adding them to calibre. So you could do a bulk December -> Dec replace.