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[BroomQueen]

I've looked in the forums and I can't seem to find where anyone could figure out how to sort the songs by track #. When I listen to an album on the pc I want to be able to hear it in the same order as I would on the actual CD. I've labled all the tracks the right # but where it says options it doesn't give an option to sort by track #, anyone know how EXCEPT putting the actuall # in the name itself? thanks

[dcwebman]

The easiest way I have found is depending on what view you're in, find the Customize Current View option usually by right-clicking on things. Then in there at the bottom right is the Sorting window. Add the fields you want to sort by in the order you want sorted. For example on mine, I have:
Album (a-z)
Track # (a-z)
Artist (a-z)
Name (a-z)

You can also click on the columns and get the order but I have found it more difficult to get the exact ordering I want that way.

And then of course when you add the songs to Playing Now, simply add them in the order they're listed in your particular view which keeps the tracks in order.

Hope this helps.
Jeff

[glynor]

Clicking on the Column Headings is fine once you understand how it works...

For example, say you have a View that is sorted by [Album]...  If you click on the [Artist] column heading, it will sort it alphabetically A-Z by [Artist], but it remains also sorted by [Artist].  By this I mean... It sorts all the Artists together from A-Z.  For tracks that have the same artist, it sorts those by [Album].  If you look at the indicators on the column headings, you'll see that they're numbered.  Number 1 is done first, then 2, then 3, and so on (I believe it only shows the numbers up to 4 levels "deep" but it works further than that).

So, continuing the previous example, if you then click on the [Genre] heading you'd get a list where all of the Genres are grouped together alphabetically, then within each Genre you'll get an alphabetical listing of each Artist (well, each one that has at least 1 track categorized as that Genre), and then within each Artist, you'd get an alphabetical list of each of that artist's albums.

So, you basically want to click on the headings in the reverse order of how you'd like them to sort.  So, if you want a list that is sorted with:

1. All the Artists together Alphabetically.
2. Then, within each "artist" the Albums grouped.
3. Then, within each "album" the tracks ordered by track #.
4. Lastly, if some songs don't have Track #'s they should sort alphabetically by track name.

You do it in reverse.... You'd click first on the [Name] header, then on [Track #], then on [Album], and lastly on [Artist].

Generally I find that if I'm trying to get fancy and have them sort more than 4 items "deep" it's much easier to use the Customize Current View dialog box that dcwebman described.  BTW: There are lots of ways to access that dialog, but the easiest is to just select any file in the view you'd like to sort, right-click, and choose Customize Current View.

If you set up a system that you will use in lots of the View Schemes, you can save it as a Preset by clicking on the preset button.

[glynor]

Also....

There is another, and sometimes better, way to sort your files!  You can do it on a View Scheme basis.  This is nice because View Schemes can automatically inherit the settings from their "parent" schemes.  This is possible because MC allows you to specify sorting when you are performing a search, and you can specify searches when creating View Schemes (which are then inherited by the view scheme's "children").

For example, if you'd like all of your Audio view schemes (not just the one called "Audio" in the Tree, but all of those "below" it) to always sort by:

[Artist]
[Album]
[Disc #]
[Track #]
[Name]

1. Right click on the tree View Scheme called Audio and choose Edit View Scheme.
2. Under Step 4 in the View Scheme dialog, click the down arrow on the left hand side of the search bar.
3. Go to Modifier --> Sorting
4. In the sorting dialog that appears, you can enter any fields you'd like to sort by, separated by commas.  So, continuing the example, I'd enter:

Code: [Select]

[Artist],[Album],[Disc #],[Track #],[Name]
You can add a "-d" to the end of one of the fields if you'd like it to sort in reverse order (descending rather than ascending).  I use the "-d" a lot to sort my "Imports" view schemes by [Date Imported]-d (which puts them in the order they were imported, with the newest imports at the top).

Again.  The great thing about doing it this way is: 1) it overrides any of the Customize Current View settings you may have applied, and 2) the sorting automatically "trickles down" to any other view schemes located "below" that one on the tree (as long as they have the "Honor parent scheme search strings" option selected in their own Step 3 part of the dialog).

I use this extensively.  When I want a specific "child" view scheme to differ from it's parent, I simply uncheck the Honor parent scheme search strings option, and build a different search there (you do need to make sure to add back in any searches from the parent you do want honored though to that child -- like Media Type = audio and the like).

EDIT: Corrected the sort search string listed above to remove spaces from between items (which breaks it and causes MC to show no files in the result).

[dcwebman]

Thanks glynor, I didn't realize about the Sorting field in the View Scheme. Unfortunately though, it didn't work for me. I used your instructions to add to the View Scheme the exact string you had which ended up being:
~sort= [Artist], [Album], [Disc #], [Track #], [Name]

That's the only thing I have in the Audio View Scheme step 4 and none of my files now show up. Even if I reduce the sort to just

~sort= [Artist]

the same thing occurs. Only be removing the Sort field do things work again. Any ideas?

[glynor]

Sorry... My bad.  It's the spaces in the sort string.  It should be:

Code: [Select]

[Artist],[Album],[Track #],[Name]
With no spaces between the different items, just as it shows in the examples in the dialog.  The spaces cause MC to consider [Album] (in the example above) to be a separate search term.  But, since "[Album]," isn't a valid search criteria, it messes it up and MC finds no files.

[dcwebman]

Ahhh, now that did it. Thanks!