Edit → Sort only affects a single folder and a single layer of children.
If I Ctrl+A to select the entire binder content then try Edit → Sort it’s grayed out / disabled.
How do I sort the entire binder? I really don’t like my documents being anything other than alphabetically sorted. It would be extra handy if their happened to be an option somewhere that would keep everything auto-sorted at all times.
If you split the editor vertically and have one (the left one, likely) to display the outliner, you can turn that into a second binder, which you may sort as you want.
I don’t want two binders or two sorting methods I just want to sort the entire current binder alphabetically. Without having to go through it one folder at a time because that would take literal hours.
Ok. But right off, I can tell you that it wouldn’t work even so.
If you have folders, the hierarchy will always supplant sorting.
If you wouldn’t care and wished the binder to sort anyways, you wouldn’t be using folders to begin with.
That statement makes no sense.
Why would I not care about alphabetizing my documents because I use folders?
If I have 5 books I don’t want to see them:
001 - Book 1
001 - Book 2
001 - Book 3
001 - Book 4
001 - Book 5
002 - Book 1
002 - Book 2
002 - Book 3
002 - Book 4
002 - Book 5
That would be ridiculous.
Same with an actual binder when I was in school I used folders for each class I was in. It would be utter chaos to sort papers from every class alphabetically together with no folders.
And I want my folders to be sorted…
Example:
Recipes:
Why do you have double and triple bullets? That makes no sense.
To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a way to get the binder’s contents to sort alphabetically at all times.
Scrivener’s design tends to assume that users will drag and drop items in the binder into a specific order because we want that order used in the output file later.
However, you could create a collection, pull all of the documents in your binder into that collection, and then sort the collection alphabetically. §10.2 of the manual discusses using collections. You can access a PDF of the manual from Scrivener’s Help menu.
Collections can be a handy way to test out a possible new organizational structure without altering the current binder order. And, they can let you sort and group different documents as needed.
First Thank you very much for actually replying to my question without being condescending like the other people here and actually taking the time to understand what I want/need. You’re awesome.
That seems quite inconvenient… Since I already know I need everything sorted… So the testing phase is done I want to actually sort the binder… Which Seems to not be possible outside of a whole lot of work. Which is bizarre to me as every other tree outliner I have ever used comes with options to automatically sort the main tree. Now given some like EssentialPIM give you strong warnings about doing such, but still have an option to do it.
Everything is out of order because Scrivener doesn’t import things alphabetically.
I’m trying to migrate from EssentalPIM to Scriverner for my writing which meant importing around 35,000~ documents spread around a few hundred folders. It was a pain just to get that many documents into the correct folders inside Scrivener, but I managed to get it done. The thought of having to manual sort everything is just not really entertainable.
Are all of the documents in the Draft/Manuscript root folder in your binder?
If they are, are you able to select that Draft folder, then click on the Scrivenings icon, and then use the Edit > Sort command?
Scrivener should give you the warning about this making a permanent change. But, that should work to sort any folders into alphabetical order.
You’ll then need to select each folder, view it as a Scrivenings session, and sort its contents.
Still a bit of a pain, but it should get you there. (At least, it did on my test project on my Mac just now.)
Editing this to add: Going forward, any new folders/documents you add to this project will be added beneath whichever item is selected in the binder. So, you may need to repeat the sorting or be strategic about where you add new documents/folders.
Funny.
All I did is reply to your question.
Which said nothing of folders at the time, by the way :
You are welcome.
If this is what (and that was enough to) trigger you:
This is not me talking to you, it is how the software would think the operation.
The issues is that that the sort only effects the main folder level, which makes it a very time consuming idea… The project that I’m trying to transfer has a lot of folder levels because it’s about 24 books spread over 4 series all part of the same metaverse.
I’ll try pipes this time instead of - to avoid the turning into bulletin list.
So my folder structure tends to be:
Wiki
|world 1
||Characters
|||Group 1
|||Group 2
|||Group 3
|Lore
||Place
|||Area in place
|||Area in place 2
|world 2
…etc
So there are probably around 600~800 folders that would need to be sorted many of which are 4-6 branches deep.
At this point the only kind of workable idea I have would be expand all the folders and than make an auto hotkey script that would try and go down the entire list and run sort very slowly on every item to avoid errors over night.
As a P/S
The outline option to sudo sort things doesn’t seem to work as a good replacement for the binder since when you sort the outline by title it flattens the folder structure and 35,000~ documents in a flat list is not too useful… at that point you just use search to find everything because you’d be scrolling all day otherwise.
Your issue seems to be more with the way you’ve exported from essentialPIM than with the way Scrivener handles its files.
(Just sayin’)
First off, I know zipola about outline tools.
But it sounds like you’re saying that
Have you actually verified in the export file that #2 is true?
Because it does seem odd that Scrivener is not importing the entries in the sequence provided.
Yeah, I was going to suggest some type of automation. I also use AHK, but I’ve never tried anything like that and it does sound like a bear of a task. If I can think of anything that might be useful to you I’ll post it here.
Best,
Jim
To Ruth’s remark about sorting the manuscript, you can also use Edit>Sort if the manuscript folder is in Corkboard or Outliner view. These come up more quickly if your project is large rather than Scrivenings view.
It’s a matter of learning some manners when it comes to enquiring and responding.
