Quote Originally Posted by Basilmusic View Post
Many thanks - I think I understand -about to try.
i notice you have all yuour composers with Surname first -mine always want to put Christians first...very confusing.
It can be a bit tedious, but it is straightforward. Go to Library -> Manage Artists

OCD considers composers and artists to be the same kind of object

You will see that each entry has a Sort Name and a Primary Name. I have mine set up so that the Primary Name is First Name Last Name order and the Sort Name is Last Name, First Name.

To change a sort name from First Name Last Name order, just highlight the name and click on swap. OCD will make the change for you. Sometimes it screws up - usually with things like Jr. or III. Then you have to click on edit which will take you to the Artist Profile form where you can directly edit the Sort Name - and provide any alternative spellings or alternative names (for example, the various spellings of Tchaikovsky's first name). With Edit you can also enter lots of other information about the composer, but making that information appear in an OCD display isn't always easy.

If you want to change the primary name, you can do so by clicking on Rename. (This can lead to unexpected consequences in the database, so I would use it with considerable caution.)

You can, in the Artist manager, highlight all the names you want to Swap (using the usual Windows techniques for highlighting series - shift-click and control-click) and then click on Swap. OCD will change all the highlighted items. You probably don't want to select-all in Artist manager to do this as there will be Orchestras and Ensembles listed there that you won't want to change.

If you have the primary and sort names as I do. then when you are entering data for a new album, you can enter the composer's name in either order and it will still be correctly associated with that composer.