When I search by author Readerware is returning some books that do not match my search criteria

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Last Updated: October 06, 2019
Keywords: columns, author

Suppose you wanted to display a list of all authors with a last name beginning with the letter "A". You could run an author search for "A*".

Simple, but sometimes you might see an author returned that does not begin with the letter "A". What is going on?

Readerware supports multiple authors, it can record up to 6 authors for each book. When you auto-catalog an item Readerware retrieves all the authors listed. The first author is stored in the Author column, the remaining authors are stored in columns Author 2 through Author 6.

When you search by author, Readerware searches all author columns. So the answer is that one of the other authors has a last name beginning with the letter "A".

If you are just looking at the Author column in the table view, you won't see the other authors. You can add these columns to the table view, right click on the Author column header and select Show->Author 2 from the popup menu. Readerware will add the second author column to the table. You can display all author columns this way if you want. (Note: Mac OS X users need to Control click on the Author column header).

In the detail view notice there is a drop down list to the left of the author field. If this displays "Authors" it is your cue that there are multiple authors for this book. Select Author 2 from the list to see the second author and so on. If the drop down list displays "Author" then there is only the one author for that book and there is no need to check for other authors.

So the search is working correctly, Readerware is displaying all books with an author beginning with the letter "A".