Sort with Custom Metadata as primary field

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi,

I have a Scrivener file organized by folders, and within those folders I have text records that include a custom metadata field called Date. In most cases, I want to see my binder in the order that I place the folders, and within the folders, I’d like to see the text records sorted by the Date field. That works fine. But…

On occasion, I want to sort all of my data by the custom metadata Date field alone, regardless of what folder a text entry resides in. In other words, I’d like to do a sort, with Date as the primary field, and not as a secondary field. (Mainly I want to do this to do a check to make sure that every single text entry is assigned an accurate custom metadata Date entry.)

The problem that I’m facing is that Scrivener appears to be sorting records with Folders as the primary sort field, and Date as the secondary sort field. This is the behavior, whether I choose to sort the binder or the outline view of my entries. Is it possible to do a sort on a text record field, while ignoring folder order?

2

You have to create a collection (which is a flat list of documents) select all and view that in outline mode. You can do that by searching for “*” with appropriate project search options to narrow it down to the files you want to see (i.e. not the Trash files, or the files outside of the draft, or…). Save that collection for later use.

Once you have that all “sorted”, you can save a layout (Window->Layouts) of your window, including the option to save outliner settings, to save a few steps.

3

Dale, thank you for getting back to me. By doing a search for everything, and narrowing it to the section my binder that I wish to include in the search, I was able to do a primary sort on my Date field. Thank you for pointing that out to a “rusty” user.