Windows Explorer for Windows 7 — How to stop automatically sorting my files

I have Windows 7. Windows Explorer automatically sorts my files in each folder. I have it set to ‘Sort by. Name’, so for now it’s sorting alphabetically, but regardless of what I have it set to ‘Sort’ by, it does it automatically. But I want to be able to move files around in the folder in different orders, and then once I’m satisfied with the order, then I can change each file’s name, and then choose to sort them alphabetically or otherwise.

For example, this is useful for a folder full of photos. Let’s say I have a folder with 50 photos in it from a vacation, and I want to re-order those photos, but I want to play around visually with different orders until I decide on the order I like most. So I want to move each file/photo around until I like the order. To do that, I would open that particular folder in Windows Explorer, then select the «Large Icons» View, and then move the photos around until I like the order. And then once I have the photos in the order I want, then I would want rename each photo (1, 2, 3, etc.) and then tell Windows Explorer to «Sort by. Name». That’s how it used to be on my old computer, but I had XP, and now I have Windows 7, but I can’t imagine that Windows 7 wouldn’t let me do the same thing. But the way it’s working for me right now, Windows Explorer just automatically orders/sorts my files according to the «Sort by» option I have chosen. So if I change a files name (say from «Photo #25» to «Photo #10»), it automatically puts that photo between «Photo #09» and «Photo #11». And if I try to move that «Photo #10» next to say «Photo #37» to see how they look next to each other, it won’t let me.

Sooo. Is there a way to have Windows Explorer ‘NOT’ sort my files at all, until I tell it to?

Sorting folders in Windows Explorer?

I’d want to know how to ensure that all my folders will be sorted and displayed on top of all the files in Windows Explorer

2 Answers 2

I’m using Windows 7, so the process might be a little different on Windows 8.1.

First, a possible simple solution.

If you are sorting by Name for example, and you see that the file and folder names are sorted by Name , but in reverse order (descending), and all the folders are grouped together and displayed at the bottom of the list, then just click on the Name column header to restore sorting to Ascending.

If this doesn’t help, or if you want to set how folders are displayed for all (or many) folders, then.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the folder you want to change the sorting/grouping of files and folders. If you want to change how it is displayed on the entire drive, then navigate to the root of the drive.

Click the View menu and then Group By .

You will have choices like:

Choose (None). If you don’t see a choice for (None), then it is already set to «(None)».

If you don’t see the menu bar with File Edit View etc. then click on Organise -> Layout -> Menu Bar to enable the menu bar.

Then change the way things are sorted however you like from the menu View Sort by .

When you are done with this, click Tools Folder Options . Then click on the View Tab, and click the Apply to Folders button.

Windows overrides the view of some folders so some folders may not be afffected by your changes.

Solving File Explorer bug:

Sorting in File Explorer with all files sorted as one big group, is the default in Windows 8.1.

This morning my windows explorer had mysteriously switched to bunching or grouping the files in 4 groups: «0-9» «a-h» «i-p» and «q-z».

This created the problem that clicking on the header of the «Date modified» column, to bring up the most recent files in my Documents folder, no longer worked properly — the top listed files would only be the most recently saved files whose names began with numerals 0 — 9. Finding all of the most recent files would require also scrolling down to check each of the «a-h» «i-p» and «q-z» sections, which in my large Documents folder would be very slow and inconvenient. In my normal workflow I want to see all the most recent files immediately whenever I open File Explorer.

The fix to this problem in Windows 8.1 is the same as the procedure Kevin Fegan describes above: In File Explorer click the View tab, click the Group By dropdown, and click None.

I couldn’t find Microsoft help instructions for this problem. File > Help said to search in Microsoft Community, directing to the Windows 8.1 «Files, Folders and Storage» which has 1,000 entries with no way to search through them. A Google search turned up nothing.

Windows Explorer sorting order for special characters?

What is the sorting order used in Windows Explorer?

I was specifically wondering what special characters sort after the alphabets?

As far as I can tell (test), all special characters seem to be sorted before the alphabets. But I couldn’t identify the order. (for. eg. ‘@’ comes after ‘%’ which is not that way on the keyboard)

Are there any special characters that would be sorted after the alphabets?

5 Answers 5

I did some testing and the overall ordering seems to be as follows.

Symbols
Latin (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Greek (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Cyrillic (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Hebrew (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Arabic (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))

Numbers
Latin (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Greek (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Cyrillic (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Hebrew (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Arabic (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))

Letters
Latin (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Greek (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Cyrillic (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Hebrew (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))
Arabic (ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx))

Sorting Rule Sequence vs Observed Order

It’s worth noting that there are really two ways of looking at this. Ultimately, what you have are sorting rules that are applied in a certain order, in turn, this produces an observed order. The ordering of older rules becomes nested under the ordering of newer rules. This means that the first rule applied is the last rule observed, while the last rule applied is the first or topmost rule observed.

Sorting Rule Sequence

1.) Sort on Unicode Value (U+xxxx)
2.) Sort on culture/language
3.) Sort on Type (Symbol, Number, Letter)

Observed Order

The highest level of grouping is by type in the following order.

1.) Symbols
2.) Numbers
3.) Letters

Therefore, any symbol from any language comes before any number from any language, while any letter from any language appears after all symbols and numbers.

The second level of grouping is by culture/language. The following order seems to apply for this:

Latin
Greek
Cyrillic
Hebrew
Arabic

The lowest rule observed is Unicode order, so items within a type-language group are ordered by Unicode value (U+xxxx).

The answers provided in this discussion, while interesting are somewhat cerebral and quite esoteric.

The simple answer to the original poster’s question is: none of the symbols are sorted after the letters.

The above answers state that symbol characters are sorted by Unicode value. However, for Windows 10 File Explorer characters in the Basic Latin block (aka ASCII characters), this is not strictly true. Being interested in what the sort order is for the Basic Latin symbol characters allowed in file names by Windows 10 File Explorer, I created, in an empty folder, a group of files each with a single allowed Basic Latin symbol character as the file name.

The following table of ASCII characters allowed in file names (showing the characters, their Unicode values and a description of the character) is arranged in the sort order used by Windows 10 File Explorer.

Characters Allowed in File Names (sorted in File Explorer collating order)

A careful examination of the above table will reveal that apostrophe, plus sign and equal sign are not in the order they would be in if File Explorer sorting was done strictly by Unicode Value. If they were sorted strictly by Unicode Value apostrophe would follow ampersand, plus sign would follow right parenthesis and equal sign would follow semicolon.

Symbols in other Unicode code sets may similarly not be sorted in Unicode Value order, I have not verified symbols in other code sets.

Change the default View and Sort options in Windows Explorer

If the Windows Explorer default view and order of a folder’s files is not satisfactory enough for you, there is an easy way to change it. For example, let’s say you need to have your files by default ordered by type and viewed as a list – not as large icons, nor in detailed view, etc, and not just by name, but first sorted by type and then by name. Here is how to achieve this change.

1) Make sure you have only one Explorer window open. Right click on an empty space of a folder and select “View – List”, then right click again and select “Sort by – Type” (if you don’t see the “Type” option, click on “More…” at the end of Sort Options and in the list that appears find the “Type” option and bring it to the top of the list.)

2) Press the alt key to release the top menu of Explorer, and go to “Tools – Folder Options”. Go to the second tab (“View”) of the dialogue box that appears, and press the “Apply to Folders” button. You will be asked to confirm; do it.

3) Close the window by pressing the Ctrl key and (with this key pressed) clicking the x button at the right top of Windows Explorer.

You may need to repeat this for each folder type, since Windows keeps different default options according to folder types (image folders, document folders, etc). After a while you will need to repeat the first and the third step, since Windows will revert to its default sorting options when you will have opened some (thousands of) times the Windows Explorer.