Move files within a directory (XP Home/SP2)

[curious]

Hello -

I

[HansV]

The order in which files in a folder are displayed in Windows Explorer is either by name, or by last modified date/time, or by file type (extension) - you can select which in View | Arrange Icons By. You can't just move files around.

[curious]

Hans -

Thanks for the quick response. Was afraid you'd say that........................

Curious

[kaplinb]

Maybe it will be handy to create a document (say, Index.doc or, better, Index.htm) with links to each file. You can easily re-arrange links inside the document...

[curious]

Thanks for the idea. I fear the concept is beyond me--I don't understand how I could I re-arrange the links inside the document. Shall study up on this, though.

Appreciate the response.

[fburg]

As others have said, you can't just move files around in a folder to a random order. The way files are sorted depends on the choice of whether you want to sort on file name, etc.

Certainly, changing the file name to have a digit (2 digits if more than 10 files) at the beginning of the file name would be one way to go. You need 2 digits even for the first 10 files if you have more than 10 files; otherwise, you'd have an order of 1-whatever, 11-whatever, ..., 19-whatever, 2-whatever.

However, there's a related possibility. Files have properties. If working in an MS Office file, click on the File menu and then Properties. For a Word file, the Properties dialog has a Summary tab. There is a box for Comments. You can enter comments here. The comments can be the order the auther wants. Not much better than changing file names. But this may put it under the author's control and get you out of the loop.

Ordinarily, the folder view has just a few items (file name, file type, size, etc.) as its columns. However, if you right click on any column heading in the folder where the files are stored, you'll see a set of choices for columns that you could display for each file. One of them is Comments. Click on this and you'll now have a column for Comments. Click on the "Comments" column heading and the sort will be alphabetically by comment (A-Z order). Click on that column heading again and it will be in reverse order (Z-A).

This may not be much better than the other suggestions. Also, the author may already be using the Comments info in his/her files.

Fred

[JoeP517]

See The sort order for files and folders whose names contain numerals is different in Windows XP than it is in Windows 2000 for a discussion of sort order in XP.

Joe

[fburg]

Joe,

It's good to see that MS figured out that 11 is greater than 9. Thanks.

Fred

[curious]

Fred -

Thank you for the Comment suggestion. I finally got the Author to try it and we were both pleased with the results.