How can I sort a playlist into alphabetical order in itunes 12.11.0.26

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How can I sort a playlist into alphabetical order in itunes 12.11.0.26

I've googled this and looked at the question in other places. None of the answers posted work for me. I'm using iTunes on a windows PC, and want to sort a playlist in iTunes into alphabetical order so it shows up that way on my iphone. I'm inserting screenshots of every configuration of itunes and that playlist I can come up with, and the options that appear when right clicking in various locations. In none of these locations is a sort option. This is a playlist that I created in alpha-order, then added songs to. I want to ahve entire playlist resorted in alpha-order. Additonally, I tried right clicking the playlist and clicking "copy to play order.' I did that with none of the songs in the list selected, with all of them selected, and with only the songs needing sorted selected, and nothing happened.

Thanks for any help.

Chris

Posted on Jan 23, 2021 8:00 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

273,063 points

Jan 24, 2021 5:25 AM in response to fatgreta

When you sort on the Name column the sort will actually use Sort Name, where a blank Sort Name is read as Name, with any leading article removed. The greyed out Sort Names are autosort values. This is why The Band..., The Blues Man, and A Broken Wing are sorted within your tracks beginning with B. You can enter a specific value in the Sort Name field to force sorting to a different position, for example if you put in The Blues Man for the second example the track would shift down into the Ts.

There are similar sort values for album artist, artist, album, composer, etc. Conventional album order would be Album by Artist which actually sorts on the first non-blank value of Sort Album Artist, Album Artist, Sort Artist, Artist, then subsorts on Album, Disk # and Track #.

tt2

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Answer 2

fatgreta Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 24, 2021 5:08 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for answering turingtest2. In the photos embedded in the original post, when I right click on the names column there is an option to add a column called "Sort Name." But when I add that column, I'm still not able to actually sort the list by name. When I do that in my entire library it works, but not in the specific playlist I'm trying to sort.

Thanks again,

Chris

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

273,063 points

Jan 24, 2021 1:48 AM in response to fatgreta

In the Songs view of the list click a column heading to sort on it, i.e. Name, then right-click on the playlist name in the side bar and click Copy to Play Order. Click the heading of the untitled left-most column of numbers to see the current play order. When you're in this view you can drag and drop items up or down the list to manually rearrange the order.

tt2

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