Book entry on tablet changed

I’m guessing this has been beaten to death SOMEWHERE, but I can’t find what I’m missing.

I've been using Calibre for a while, and when I found this problem I updated to 5.36 64-bit to see if that would help.

Sometime in the not too distant past, something in Calibre changed and my configured template for sending ebooks to the tablet isn’t working the way it previously did.

I copied the basic template from the calibre template language guide. It looks like this:
{author_sort}/{title}/{title} - {authors}

and for the book “The Foundation” by “Isaac Asimov” the will become:
Asimov, Isaac/The Foundation/The Foundation - Isaac Asimov

I’m not getting that. It looks like I’m just getting the title and nothing else.

For example, if I send a book with author “Brad Abraham” and a title “Magicians Impossible: A Novel” using the above template, I get on the tablet an entry in the folder that says

“Magicians Impossible_A Novel”
books:1 folders: 0

That’s all. No author, nothing but the title and information about folders?

What I USED to get is
Author
Title
Series
Size and Date…

So, for the book “Massacre Pond: A Novel” by “Paul Doiron”, that’s the 4th book in the “Mike Bowditch” series, it would look like:
Doiron Paul
Massacre Pond: A Novel --- in a larger, clearer font than the rest of the information
#4 Mike Bowdich
966K epub 1/26/22

NOW, I get
Massacre Pond_A Novel
books:1 folders: 0

No series information, no author...

I was using the template (or something very similar to this) previously
{author_sort}/{series:|| #}{series_index:05.2f|| - }{title}

When I look in the preferences under “Add your own columns”, I don’t see “author_sort”. I do have Title, Authors, Size, Rating, Series.

In the Sending books to devices section it still shows “author_sort”, “authors”, “series”, “series_index” and “title”.

I tried replacing author_sort with "authors", but that just causes the author folder to get put on the tablet by first name, last name instead of last name, first name - so it's NOT what I want.

I’m not sure what I need to change…