Is there a way of sorting the binder files according to their last modified date and time? I am now using Scrivener for all sorts of things. For note-taking, I use it with Dropbox and iOS apps. In iOS, apps can sort the many notes according to date modified, which makes it easy to have the last modified note on top of the list. In Scrivener, however, I don’t see an obvious way to do that, that is, to sort the files in the binder according to modified date (I understand Scriv wasn’t exactly written for this, but hey, when a tool is flexible, you realize you can use it for all sorts of things)
The Documents->Sort menu is probably what you want. I found that, by the way, by going to Help->Search and entering the word ‘sort’, then arrowing down through the results. That is a very hand Mac OS X feature, available in most programs.
I think that there may be a way to do this via the outliner - you’ll have to fiddle around a bit, or search the fora for a recent thread about this very topic.
smacks head Yeah, I kind of forgot the original question while composing the “answer”. Sorry about that. The outliner will let you reorder on most meta-data. I hope you get this issue sorted, as our UK friends will say.
One thing to note is that sorting in the outliner is just a view preference, it will not permanently re-order documents. You can however do this quite easily. Just click on the folder you want to sort, open Outliner, sort by the column you wish, then select all of the documents and drag them back into the folder in the Binder where they belong.
Important note: don’t try to do this to multiple levels of hierarchy at once, you could end up with a very scrambled draft! It’s best to collapse everything in the Outliner when doing a bulk re-order like this.
Thanks Ioa. That worked. However, since the info is there, can’t we add more functionality to the Documents > Sort function so that one can sort files according to different variables, rather than simply alphabetically?
There used to be a sort documents option in the documents menu. Not there anymore. Also used to be a commit to binder option in the outline editor. Where are these now?
On my Mac running Scrivener 3.4, there is not a “Sort” item in the Documents menu. There is however a Sort item in the Edit menu. That menu Item shows a sub menu with Ascending and Descending as options when I select a folder in the binder containing documents. Choosing either option does nothing to the order of the documents in the selected folder.
I am trying to alphabetically sort documents within a folder. On my Mac running Scrivener 3.4, there is not a “Sort” item in the Documents menu (as some people on this forum have claimed that there is). There is however a “Sort” item in the “Edit” menu. That menu Item shows a sub-menu with “Ascending” and “Descending” options. These items are correctly disabled when a folder is not selected. However, choosing either “Ascending” or “Defending” menu option does nothing to the order of the documents in the selected folder. There seems to be a more cumbersome option, selecting the folder, going to outline view, clicking on the sort carrot in the document name column, indeed sorts, first ascending, then descending, then reverting to the binder orders of the documents. If one selects all of the documents in the outliner, and drags these to the binder folder that they are from, Scrivener sets their orders to how they were last ordered in the outline view. But why doesn’t the Sort menu item do what it is supposed to do?
OK: after some trial and error, found that my choice not to name my documents (this is a folder of documents that make up entries into my book’s glossary/index and all begin with the topic word or phrase), so that Scrivener auto-names them or pseudo-names them by the first few words in the first line of each document’s text. It is this pseudo-name facility that seem to be tripping up Scrivener’s Edit/Sort/ menu action. But here is something odd, if I go to the outline view with the same folder selected, I can sort the documents by name (pseudo-name) by clicking on the title of the name column (one click sorts alphabetically, next click sorts depending, next click returns the order of documents to the binder order). Then, if I select and drag all rows as they are ordered in the outline view to the folder in the binder that they are from, the binder then updates to the new sorted order!(?) And here is another strange anomaly in Scrivener’s interface, you can go to the cork board view and rearrange document order and there is a special little button at the bottom of the view that allows you to commit the new manual sort to the binder order. If this button was also available in the outline view, things would be oh so much easier and intuitive. Speaking of intuitive and consistency, why isn’t there a way to sort alphabetically in the cork board view? But the real question is, why can’t one use the “Sort” menu item in the “Edit” menu, to sort binder documents that are pseudo-named when the same sort is provided in the outline view? Oh, and why is Sort not an option from the contextual menu when right clicking on a binder folder?
Highlight the parent in the Binder (not the children), then Edit > Sort > Ascending / Descending. You may get a confirmation box telling you that the changes can’t be undone (unless you’ve checked the ‘don’t remind again’ button). Click confirm and you’re (ahem) sorted…
It works in the Binder, on lines of text within an editor, and in the Keyword HUD.
On my system it does. Note that sorting the Binder directly (rather than the Outline view) will pop up a warning that the action is permanent, and no action will be taken until you tell Scrivener to proceed.
On my Mac running Scrivener 3.4, running on Mac running Sequoia 15.1.1 there is not a “Sort” item in the Documents menu. There is however a Sort item in the Edit menu. That menu Item shows a sub menu with Ascending and Descending as options when I select a folder in the binder containing documents. Choosing either option does nothing to the order of the documents in the selected folder. Nothing at all. No dialog warning comes up. Nothing.
OK, seems this is not at all as described. First of all, there is no such thing as a “Sort” item in either the Project or the Documents menus. There is one in the Edit menu. And, when a folder is selected in the binder, choosing the sub-item “Ascending” or “Descending” will sort the documents within that folder. IF… the folder are manually named. If you leave them un-named as I have, so that their display name is the first few words of the document’s text, I will “Sort” does not sort them. It does nothing. But there is a work around. An especially awkward workaround. Especially if your folder happens to hold a lot of documents. You can select the folder, then choose the outline view, and then click on the the “Name” label at the top of the first column. The first click will sort them Ascending, the second click will sort them decending, and the third will return them to the order they were in before you asked for a sort. The really awkward part is that you then have to select and manually drag them over to the original folder’s icon in the binder. Scrivener replaces the original order in the binder with the order of your outline view sort. Huh? Well that is the only way to do it if your docs are unnamed. I wonder what other problems I am walking into by not naming some of my documents? Curious why name sort would work on un-named documents in outline view but not in the binder? I hope this is something that can be fixed in future versions. Also, and this goes more in the slightly annoying category, un-named documents in the binder are italicized (no problem with that), but the text of their pseudo titles are also rendered in an accent color, and if you change the background color of your binder, can be almost impossible to read. The color of the text in the binder defaults to a color that shifts to white if the background is dark, or black or a dark grey if the binder background is light. Makes perfect sense. Unfortuantly, the pseudo names of the un-named docuemts isn’t as smart.
If there are only unnamed documents in a folder, sorting does not work at all.
If there are both named and unnamed documents in a folder, sorting descending puts the named files on top, in descending order, followed by the unnamed documents, also in descending order.
If there are both named and unnamed documents in a folder, sorting ascending puts the unnamed files on top, but in descending order, followed by the named documents, correctly in ascending order.
What is expected behaviour: The sorting is visible right away in the Binder, but not yet in the Editor when using Scrivenings Mode. The user has to select an item other than the group they have applied the sorting to and then re-select this group to see the documents re-ordered in the Editor.
But, as I have discovered, this Edit/Sort menu item only sorts documents that have been manually named. Scrivener ignores the menu action completely when the documents are pseudo-named by the first few words in each document’s text. Inconsistencies like this cause a user to have to remember workarounds or go through the trouble 2 months later of having to sort it all out yet again.
Consider: does it make sense to sort based on a (pseudo) name that will change as soon as the author edits the first few words of the document? Or is it more reasonable to group unnamed documents together so that the author can readily give them names to facilitate sorting?
An argument can be made for either choice, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Scrivener to assume that if the author wants a document to sort to a particular location, they’ll give it an appropriate name.
