How do I sort a playlist by date added or alphabetically?
Everything that I can find on the topic is old and those options no longer seems to exist.
The latest recommendation is to sort the playlist manual. No one wants to manual sort a list of 100 or more alphabetically or by date added and switch between them manually.
It seems stupid to not be able to do this so I'm sure that I'm missing something obvious.
iPod nano (7th Gen)
Regarding your first screenshot, to see the same view as I showed, click on View / View As / Songs. To add a column, right-click on any of the column headers...
...and select the option you want from the pop-up menu that appears:
Drag the columns left or right to get the order you want. I believe (but I'm not 100% certain) that once you have the song order sorted in the iTunes Library, it will then show that Playlist in that order when you look at it through iTunes.
As far as I know, you cannot adjust the view of what is on the iPod when looked at through iTunes. Instead, you sort the Playlist to the view you want and then connect the iPod to iTunes, when it will then show the same view that iTunes has.
Don't forget, that "view" cannot be reproduced on the iPod, so perhaps that's why it can't be altered in the view you showed.
Regarding your first screenshot, to see the same view as I showed, click on View / View As / Songs. To add a column, right-click on any of the column headers...
...and select the option you want from the pop-up menu that appears:
Drag the columns left or right to get the order you want. I believe (but I'm not 100% certain) that once you have the song order sorted in the iTunes Library, it will then show that Playlist in that order when you look at it through iTunes.
As far as I know, you cannot adjust the view of what is on the iPod when looked at through iTunes. Instead, you sort the Playlist to the view you want and then connect the iPod to iTunes, when it will then show the same view that iTunes has.
Don't forget, that "view" cannot be reproduced on the iPod, so perhaps that's why it can't be altered in the view you showed.
Click on the Column Header of the column you want to sort by.
Look at the following screenshots:
Manual Sort Order (forward)
- also date added (to the Playlist) order
In the screenshot above, this is the default order, denoted by the arrow in the unnamed column to the left of the ticks column. In this order, the first song added to this playlist is top of the list and the last song is bottom. So this list is in date added (to this playlist) order. Note the Date Added column to the right of the Name column. That is the date added to iTunes; but we're sorting by date added to this playlist. Make a note of songs 3 and 4.
Manual Sort Order (reverse)
- also reverse date added (to this Playlist) order
In the screenshot above, this is the same list, in reverse order, accomplished by clicking on the ticks column header, so songs 3 and 4 are now 72 and 71 in the list.
To sort this Playlist alphabetically, click on the Name Column header, so that the arrow is pointing up:
Alphabetical Order (forward)
As you can see, the song Keep On Movin' is now between a song starting with J and a song starting with L. To reverse this list, simply click on the Name header again so that the arrow points down.
In this sort order, you cannot manually move songs up or down in the list.
Note that each Playlist is viewed independently of any other. This means that you can have each list in the specific order you want. But it also means that if you want every list in the same order, you have to set every list individually.
So I'm familiar with these methods and normally use them all the time esp with my ipod classic, but I'm running into two problems with my wife's ipod touch:
1) One of the views doesn't have column headers so there is nothing to click on:
So how do I get the column headers to show up here?
2) The other problem is that on playlist on the device, there are column headers but they aren't clickable. Similar to this one except the songs weren't grayed out - This screen shot view is with the device connected thru Wi-Fi. I need to physically connected it to see the view with the headers but where they aren't clickable. (Incidentally, the above playlist is sync'ed to the iPod touch with the view below. But I would click and click on the column headers and nothing.
How do I sort a playlist by date added or alphabetically?
