File Explorer – sort files

This week, we’re exploring File Explorer and your many options for how the files and their details display.

On Monday, we learned about the Navigation pane. Click here to read that tip

Yesterday, we looked at your many options for choosing icons and showing details about files. Click here to read that tip

Today, we’ll learn about your options for displaying information about your files and sorting the files. We’ll start by opening File Explorer.

file-explorer-taskbar

Click the View tab.

view-tab

Your options for sorting files are on the top right of the File Explorer window.

sorting-options

We’ll begin by clicking on Sort by.

sort-by-file-explorer

The drop-down menu offers you an almost overwhelming number of choices. Files can be sorted by Name or Date. You could select Type to sort by the kind of file, such as image or document or executable. Size can be helpful criteria if you’re perhaps looking to clear some space. You can also sort by Tags. Choosing Date created or Date modified can help you find older files or recently edited files.  Date taken and Dimensions can help you find photos and images in the Pictures library. In the Documents library, you can also sort by Authors.

sorting-options-list

You can also choose between Ascending or Descending. For alphabetical listings this is the choice between A to Z or Z to A. For dates it’s the choice between oldest to newest or newest to oldest. For size, largest to smallest or smallest to largest.

ascending-descending

The next option is to choose your Columns.

choose-columns

There are an amazing amount of options.  You’ll see the basics like Name, Status, Date, and Type. There are also a bunch of other options that will be specific to certain kinds of file. For example, for pictures you could add focal length.  For music you could add Album artist. To select a detail, put a check next to it. Uncheck, it you don’t care to see it.

choose-column-details

You can also choose the priority of each detail by selecting Move Up or Move Down.

down-up-explorer

For example, right now Status is the first column, Name is second, Date is third.

name-status-date

If I move Status and Name down and Date up, it will look like this.

optoins-for-sort

You can adjust the width of columns by typing in the pixels here. Or just hover at the top of columns until you get a handle and pull to adjust.

column-width-number

Now that we have that sorted out – sorry, couldn’t help myself – we can move on to grouping files tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.