It would be great to be able to sort documents by creation dates, not only by title. And to be able to do it in a folder.
I am often writing notes in a special folder, and I would love to be able to reconstruct the order they where written in.
Thanks for a great application!
Unfortunately sorting within an outline is very difficult - it would also mean that you could no longer drag or drop items around. Or do you mean the sort should be permanent?
All the best,
Keith
Hmm, I didn’t think of that. But if I were to choose I think I would prefer the ability to drag & drop items around 
Best, CYF
An option to have files unsorted (current default) or sorted by some attribute (e.g. creation date, alphabetical) would be very nifty. DEVONThink implements that, for example.
Hi,
As I say, you wouldn’t be able to drag and drop while they were sorted. To be honest this is on my list for 2.0’s outliner but may get dropped simply owing to time constraints and moved to a later version, but even then sorting in an outliner is problematic. DT is a very different program.
Thanks and all the best,
Keith
FWIW I have discovered that the document sort function within any folder is NOT only for alphabetical sorting. It can sort on date (actually number) as well. So, if you include a number that represents a date (for example Dec 16th, 2009 would be 2009.1216) as the first part of the title of each doc within a folder, those docs can be easily sorted by date in Scrivener (ascending sorts old to new). This is helpful if you wish to sort scenes or events or story points or whatever chronologically within a part of your manuscript. Can be particularly useful early in a project as a means of keeping track of candidate events/scenes chronologically – prior to when the actual story-telling order begins to take shape.
The good news is that I took another look at this and 2.0 may well include temporary outliner sorting by column.
All the best,
Keith
Great! To have the option to assign a date property to each doc as can be done now with Labels and Status would be great – and to be able to sort temporarily by date would be even greater! Any possibility of retaining such “temporary” sorts in something like a Smart Folder?
“Something like a smart folder”, yes, though you will have to wait and see on that score.
As for custom dates - I’ve already coded an extra date field, “custom date”, into 2.0 - a date you can enter manually. However, I’m still considering whether to keep this or change it. One problem is that entering dates into text fields in Cocoa is a nightmare - you have to stick to a rigid date entry schema. i.e. Unlike in something like Excel, where you can type “12/12/09” or 12-Dec-2009" or “12.12.09” or whatever, in Cocoa you are allowed one date format only for data entry, which will drive users up the wall (it does me). I could get around this by trying to find something like a calendar control for adding dates, but there’s another problem - what about users who are writing fantasy fiction or sf, who may require fantastical, made-up date schemes? The standard OS X date picker would be no use to such users… One solution might be to have the custom column as simple text-only. Users who wanted to enter a date could always enter it backwards then. I still have to decide the way forward, though, so I welcome any feedback.
All the best,
Keith
While I always prefer choices, I could probably live for awhile with a single format date field. Also like the idea of a simple text field to sort alphabetically and numerically (thus allowing for chronological sequencing ala 1986.0105; 2004.0618; 2009.1217…).
Great!
Could use help with this. Because it looks like you can sort by date by putting the date into the title of the document (Sep 6, 2010 for example) but when it does the sort, it garbles the numbers. So instead of:
Sep 4, 2010
Sep 5, 2010
Sep 17, 2010
it goes
Sep 17, 2010
Sep 4, 2010
Sep 5, 2010
Presumably it isn’t recognizing the double digits as double digits? Or am I doing something wrong?
Try adding a zero before the single figure days: e.g. Sep 04, 2010.
Mark
Works! Thanks.