Sort Binder files?

[darinb]

I see how to sort the Binder files in the in the Outline View (i.e. add a “Created Date” column and then sort it) but how do I sort in the regular Binder sidebar? I’m keeping a journal and it would be terribly useful if I could sort it (or if it would automatically sort itself) rather than manually maintaining the sort order.

I’m just getting used to Scrivener. Am I missing something?

Or is there a better approach to a journal within Scrivener?

–Darin

[darinb]

O.K., just found a partial answer. Sort of non-intuitive but basically you just sort in the Outliner or Corkbaord and drag the entries back to the Binder.

11.2.3 Sorting by Columns
To sort by columns, click on the column header. The first click will sort ascending, click- ing again will sort descending, and a third click will turn off sorting.
This form of sorting is a way of viewing information in the Outliner. It will not impact the underlying order of the items in the Binder, so you can safely use it in conjunction with other methods of gathering items or viewing them, such as search results or multiple selections, without fear of disrupting your book structure.
If you do indeed wish to change the underlying Binder order to match the outlining sort order, you can do so by selecting all of the outliner rows you wish to change and dragging them back into the folder they reside in, in the Binder or back into the folder they are indented beneath in the Outliner itself. When items are dragged (even back to their same location), their order is remembered, so as long as the sorted items come from the same folder, dragging them back to that folder will re-order them in according with their visible order in the Outliner (or Corkboard, for that matter) view. This cannot be used to re-order many items within sub-folders at once. You’ll need to re-order each folder individually.
In the case of the Title (and Synopsis) column, sorting will be performed by item title, not the synopsis content.

I aslo see that if you have “Draft” selected in the Binder (rather than one of the documents within) it will automatically place the new document at the bottom of your other documents.

That’s most of the way there. Any way to have the Binder maintain a sorted order automatically?

–Darin

[kewms]

@darinb

That’s most of the way there. Any way to have the Binder maintain a sorted order automatically?

–Darin

Sorry, no. For most applications, sorting the Binder would be disastrously awful. It’s not something we want users to be able to do by mistake.

Katherine

[darinb]

That’s a bummer. Seems it would be very useful to have for journaling use. Much of my own writing starts off as a journal entry gone wild…

Of course, you could have an “unsorted” option which would return the sort to the “natural” order as created/chosen by the user. So nothing is lost.

Is there still time to implement it in the first release of Version 3?

–Darin

[ScriverTid]

I think that’s why it’s a feature of the Outliner - there you can sort by any sequence you wish WITHOUT affecting the Binder. The Binder is meant to be fluid and changeable, as much or as little as you like. If it was sortable it would - from what I have learned so far - run counter to the whole philosophy of Scrivener.

There are journalling applications like Evernote, or Mariner Software’s MacJournal. Maybe something like that would suit your journal better?

[darinb]

I have tried journaling programs. They are fine. But I’m trying to move everything to one program, as much as possible. Too much, too scattered, too easy to lose things.

My ideal is a DAM for writers. I’m a photographer–a DAM is a “Digital Asset Manager”–which keeps track of all your photo and video files. It doesn’t care what format they are in and you can edit them within the DAM or use an external editor via the DAM, which then saves and presents the edited version (and preserves the original, too). Aperture and Lightroom are two examples.

Scrivener is the nearest thing I have found. It would seem to have everything you might need for a journaling program except the sorting possibility. (And, as I said before, the program wouldn’t need to forget the “natural order” of the files in the Binder. Just present them in different orders depending on the needs of the writer, always preserving the option to return to the “natural order.”)

Just thinking out loud–and trying to learn one writing program well versus scattering work across different environments…

–Darin

[kewms]

@darinb

Scrivener is the nearest thing I have found. It would seem to have everything you might need for a journaling program except the sorting possibility. (And, as I said before, the program wouldn’t need to forget the “natural order” of the files in the Binder. Just present them in different orders depending on the needs of the writer, always preserving the option to return to the “natural order.”)

The Outliner and the Collections feature are the two mechanisms for this in Scrivener.

Katherine

[Kinsey]

As Katherine says, you should definitely look into the Collections feature. Sounds like it’s very close to what you’re looking for.