Why won't title sort use alphabetic?

[wildchild1954]

I have a downloaded base of fanfiction stories that seems to drive Calibre's
Title Sort crazy. Say the stories title is The Boon. Title will always show it as The Boon but the Title Sort will always show it as Boon, The. I have set every Sort tweak that I can find to sort by Alphabetic instead of Library but nothing seems to work.

When I'm looking for a particular story in a base of 454 books it's a real b***h trying to find something that isn't under the title I saved it as!!

Can anyone please tell me how to force this to sort Title Sort by alphabetic sort instead of Library sort?!!!

[chaley]

Moderator Notice
Moved from the calibre companion forum to the calibre forum

[sgmoore]

The way I did this (and as far as I know it is the only way) is to set the Sort Title on all the books to be the same as the title.

To do this, you go to Preferences, Tweaks and search for title_series_sorting and change it to

title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic'

This will become the default for new books, but you need to update all your existing books, i.e. Make sure you don't have any filters applied, Press Ctrl-A to select them all, goto Edit MetaData / Edit Metadata in Bulk and tick the checkbox called 'Update Title Sort' and hit apply.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by wildchild1954

Can anyone please tell me how to force this to sort Title Sort by alphabetic sort instead of Library sort?!!!

Setting the tweak 'title_series_sorting' to 'strictly_alphabetic' should do the trick. It's even given as an example in the file itself.

[wildchild1954]

I did set 'title_series_sorting' to 'strictly_alphabetic_order' as well as 'template_title_series_sorting' but it's still sorting as if for a library. "A Beautiful Mess" is still title sorting as "Beautiful Mess, A". I have restarted Calibre Heaven only knows how many times now!

[DNSB]

Did you follow the last part of @sgmoore's message and updated the title to title-sort conversion?

Originally Posted by sgmoore

This will become the default for new books, but you need to update all your existing books, i.e. Make sure you don't have any filters applied, Press Ctrl-A to select them all, goto Edit MetaData / Edit Metadata in Bulk and tick the checkbox called 'Update Title Sort' and hit apply.

[wildchild1954]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Did you follow the last part of @sgmoore's message and updated the title to title-sort conversion?

I printed those instructions just so I could be sure I was following them right. I did everything step-by-step

# Control sorting of titles and series in the library display

title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic_order'

I even changed every tweak that came up in a Sort Title search.

# Control formatting of title and series when used in templates

save_template_title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic_order'

When I did the bulk MetaData and ticked "Update Title Sort, clicking on Apply made every single book in that particular database sort with any The, A, An, etc. last. So A beautiful Mess is now sorting in the B's as Beautiful Mess, A. Remember, we're talking a database of 452 books!!

[chaley]

Originally Posted by wildchild1954

I did set 'title_series_sorting' to 'strictly_alphabetic_order' as well as 'template_title_series_sorting' but it's still sorting as if for a library. "A Beautiful Mess" is still title sorting as "Beautiful Mess, A". I have restarted Calibre Heaven only knows how many times now!

The tweak should be 'strictly_alphabetic', not "strictly_alphabetic_order'. Look at the examples in the tweak documentation.

[wildchild1954]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Did you follow the last part of @sgmoore's message and updated the title to title-sort conversion?

I printed those instructions just so I could be sure I was following them right. I did everything step-by-step

# Control sorting of titles and series in the library display

title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic_order'

I even changed every tweak that came up in a Sort Title search.

# Control formatting of title and series when used in templates

save_template_title_series_sorting = 'strictly_alphabetic_order'

When I did the bulk MetaData and ticked "Update Title Sort, clicking on Apply made every single book in that particular database sort with any The, A, An, etc. last. So A beautiful Mess is now sorting in the B's as Beautiful Mess, A. Remember, we're talking a database of 452 books!!

[chaley]

The tweak should look like this: