Icons on the Edit Screen

In the Title and Sub Title what does the bB icon do?
In Title Sort what does the AZ icon do?

If Iā€™m following you right - the icon in the Title / SubTitle field capitalizes the first letter of each word.
In Title Sort, the AZ will sort in A to Z order or Z to A order (Ascending or Descending) ā€¦

Hi @23281 For the title and sub-title the Bb is actually pretty cool! If you import a book and the title or sub title was entered by someone else ALL in lower case - then click on that button and it will auto- fix it!!! So for example, if it looks like this:

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click on the bB and it will change it to this:

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I love this feature- because A LOT of sub titles come in with NO capitalization which I find very annoying!!! :rofl:

For the title sort - I donā€™t think there is one in the edit screen - since there is only ever 1 title (or sub-title for any given book. So maybe you mean the main page of Book Collector?

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if so when you click on that it allows you to set up several different kinds of sorts and you can choose which one you want.

I have several set up - and when I am looking at the books for a particular author - I always want the title to come first (which is the one that it is currently set to).

If that is not what you are talking - provide more info and screenshots if possible of where you are in the software.

@slreid01 indeed is correct on the Bb button, so check that with the screenshots to see what it is about!

As for the ā€œAZā€ button inside the edit book screen it ā€œgeneratesā€ a ā€œSort Titleā€ for the book.

The sort title is used when sorting by ā€œtitleā€ in your main screen.

If for instance the title is ā€œThe Book Nameā€, clicking the AZ button in the Edit Book screen will generate the sort title of ā€œBook Nameā€ without ā€œTheā€, so it sorts with the B.

@slreid01 thank you for your great reply. I did have a question though, I noticed your ā€œsort settingsā€ are doing:

First sort by Title, then for every title that is the same, sort by Year, then for ever book that has the same title and year, sort by ā€œSigned byā€ etc.

I donā€™t think this sorting is actually doing anything on so many fields? Or do you have many books with the same title and year?

Hi AJ - That is actually on purpose! I am what is called a completist book collector - which means I buy (when I can get my hands on them!) the first edition from every country as well as Advanced Reading Copies or the actual original manuscript. And sometimes, the books are then published in a limited edition by a small press - (ex: ONLY 500 copies of the book exist in the world) which means that they are a different publishing house and possibly a different publication year as well. First editions from other countries can get published the same year, or one or 2 years later than the original first. I use this when I am reviewing only one author - not ALL authors. I have one author in particular where this is helpful as she has written approx. 60 books - but for her alone - I have 275 books. (And these 275 - she is listed as the ONLY author. I am not even talking about the other 346 books that are anthologies or journals that she appears in - that I also have. These all appear under ā€˜Noneā€™ in my author list but have a tag with her name so that when I search by her name, I get all books that she wrote or appears in.)

And in regards to the signed - sometimes I have 2 versions of the same book - and one is signed and one is not. (I donā€™t use the number of copies field as usually due to all of the above - there are a lot of differences between each book - even though they are the same title and author. )

Because the books printed in another language can also be named (obviously) different than the actual book published here in the US, I use the title field for the actual name of the book in the language it was printed in. Then I use the sort name field to enter the English name - so that all of the books with the same name all appear together in the view - even if the actual book name is not the same.

So in the below pic I have 4 copies of Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates - they all were actually published in the same year - however, they have different publishing houses and some are signed and some are not.

The first was printed in the US, the 2nd is the actual manuscript (in a custom clam shell to protect it), the 3rd is from Great Britain and the 4th is a leather-bound Franklin mint edition.

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When I went back and looked at the particular sort criteria - I realized I had ā€˜signedā€™ twice - but that was because I had signed in my Extras before you all came out with the signed by field. At the time, I was in the process of adding all of the signed by stuff in the new field - but now that Iā€™ve got all of that setup - I can probably take out one of those signed fields.

The sorting works pretty well for the most part - sometimes I have odd things happen and I can usually figure out why the sort I see is different than what I think it should be!

If you think there is something wrong with the sort I am using - or a better way to use the sort - I am all ears!

Sherri :grinning:

OH! And thank you for the info on the AZ in the edit page - Iā€™'d never noticed it before! Or maybe I did and forgot about it - because it doesnā€™t do what I WANT it to do!!

Here is what I want: There are a LOT of books in the world that start with The or A. I do not want my book sort to sort on that - I always leave A and The out of the sort name so that the book sorts on the 2nd word in the book. It is much easier to find this way - or at least I think so!

Oh wow! No, that actually makes perfect sense then I think haha!

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Change behaviour of AZ button
If you do NOT want the AZ button to recognize ā€œTheā€ and ā€œAā€, you can actually manage which articles this button ā€œactsā€ on by opening Tools > Options and find ā€œRecognized Articlesā€. If you remove ā€œTheā€ and ā€œAā€ there, the AZ button will ignore stripping those when you click the AZ button.

Ignore Sort Titles completely
Also, if you want to ignore Sort Titles completely and always sort on the Title field, go to Tools > Options and click ā€œSorting/AutoCap/Indexā€ and checkbox the ā€œIgnore the Title Sort fieldā€

Hi @CLZ_AJ, thanks for that info - I have looked at theTools ā†’ Options stuff before related to the articles - I vaguely remember not liking something about it - Iā€™d have to turn it back on and play with it some to remember. I donā€™t have time to do that now - but Iā€™ll do it in the next couple of weeks - and see if my mind has changed on it! :grin:

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Thank you to all those replies and the added bonuses of extra information that I can also make use of.

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