Sonny Software

Does anyone know if there is any way to do a secondary sort in list view? That is, is it possible to sort first by author and then by title?

No, you can't (well, you kind of can, see below). The initial sort done by Bookends is author/date. If you click on a header, the sort is on that column only.

There is a way to do this, but it's a bit of a pain. Turn OFF sorting of the list view (in Preferences). Then get the references you want in the hits list (e.g. Shift-Command-A for all) and use Hits -> Sort Hits List (sort by author/title). Now when you click on the Hits group, you'll see your references sorted by author/title.

Jon
Sonny Software

...but this does not work for Date/Author, because in this case sort is not by year only but by date as entered (e.g. MM/JJ/YYYY or YYYY/MM/JJ gives different sort order), right? a YEAR/Auther sort would be quit useful for me

tom

That's easier said than done. There are dozens of way to enter dates. It is possible to extract the year if it's there in a four digit form, but virtually impossible otherwise. Given the enormous variability in date display (not just those entered by users, but those downloaded from many different online sources) such a sort would be hit-and-miss.

Jon
Sonny Software

how is it then possible to see in list view year only? here it seems to work fine (at least with my database)

Because all your references must have a 4 digit year (which I said, Bookends can extract). Try entering a date in another form (e.g. 01/01/06) and see what Bookends displays.

Jon
Sonny Software

OK, I got 4 digits: because for citing I need the year with 4 digits. I do not know any format where you use only two digits. Does 01/01/06 mean 1906 or 2006? Indeed, such a sort would be hit-and-miss, because the entry is ambiguous (and not useful for correct citing, in my opinion)

I mean, if you have the year with 2 digits, you won't have only sorting problems but you will have a lot of trouble for creating a correct bibliography etc. The problem is located in the entry and not how BE it treats. Does anybody use year with 2 digits?