In OS X Lion, Finder will not "Arrange By > Name" in "Column view".

Thanks.

Hero! Despite claims to the contrary this function is "hidden" and was really bl***y annoying!

Fantastic. I just wish I had found this sooner. Thank you!

Barney-15E wrote:

Try setting the Arrange by to None. Then, hold down the option key and press the Arrange button. What is it sorted by?

Barney

Just ran into this arrange problem in OS X Lion 10.7.5. I couldn't get Finder to arrange by name in ascending order in list view. ( Only descending or reverse alphabetical order).

Your tip worked perfectly.

Thank you so much!! I have been searching for this for a month!➕

Thanks Barney,

I spent three hours with Apple Support today including having to reload my operating system to try and solve this problem. Nothing worked so I tried to Google the problem and found this post. Simply selecting "none" on the arrange tab clear it up. Does anyone know why the problem only happened when I was viewing the Desktop in Finder and not any other site?

Thank you.

Thanks...!

This was driving me nuts for days, after I sorted in order to find something, couldn't find my way back, absurd...!!!

I agree with others that comment on the idiocy of this saituation, hiding the "save as" facility in a similar manner and the removal of the PAN hand in Preview.

What could Apple possibly think there is to be achieved by making their customers angry....????

Your fix doesn't work for me (I'm running 10.7.5). I change arrange by to none, I change sort by to name, and then when I look at arrange by, it's set to name again!!

(update) got it. make sure you start holding option before you click view, otherwise it will not work

In my humble opinion, previous versions of OS X handled the feature of sorting files in a finder window so much better than Mountain Lion.

I'd like to think I'm a reasonably smart person, and I literally just spend 5+ minutes trying to figure out how to sort my files.

I'm not sure why, but they buried the sort underneath the Arrange. I would assume that most people just want to sort. However, that is Apple's passive-aggressive way to get you to use a new feature.

thanks a lot- its so silly it drove me insane, and yet such a simple solution.

tnx you guys made my day

I'm having a similar issue. I have Arrange By set to Kind and Sort By set to Name, but the files are not always sorted in alphabetical order. I know I can fix this by setting Arrange By to None, but I want it grouped by file type, then by name. For years, I've put a space before my folder names to keep them at the top of the Finder columns (a silly little workaround, but it worked). Now I'm supposed to be able to do it with the settings, but the files are not always sorted in order. If I close the Finder window and reopen in, it will often correct itself, but not always. I'd like a bug fix from Apple on this one.

thanks! this has been driving me nuts!

Thank you everyone! Even in 2014 this information is proving valuable!