Clear sorting information

Those grey values are meant to be there, and have the correct data in them! See in my example how both the band name and one of the album titles gains greyed sort values. If it weren't for them the two albums would be listed in the second column in reverse order and the band would be listed with others that begin "The " instead of with the bands/artists that begin with C.

The grey values aren't real values that take up any storage, either in the library or the tag, They just let you see what auto-sort value iTunes will work with. You may well not have noticed them before you enabled the sort columns while exploring how they worked. Just turn the sort columns off. Problem solved.

The NAS is not relevant to this (non-)issue. iTunes is working the way it is meant to. 🙂

{Slaps forehead}

Do you mean you have the wrong but active sorting data for the artists and they are all sorting on space??? Select the group of 61 artists. Get Info. Type X in the Sort Artist and Sort Album Artist boxes. Click OK. Get info. Delete the X from the two sort fields. Click OK. Close iTunes and then reopen. Better now?

Why do any of your Artists have the value " " as their album name? Have you actually overwritten the artists/album artists of all of these albums or is there just one called " " that the others have all merged into via a common sorting field?

Album Artist trumps Artist in terms of grouping tracks. You may have " " (non-empty value) in Album Artist that can be deleted. Again in some cases you need to close and reopen iTunes to see the benefit of the edit.

tt2

Message was edited by: turingtest2

I don't see Album Artist in the column headings of your screenshot, but I'm guessing you've inadvertently introduced a space there.

Make sure the albums have valid data in Artist, then select all tracks, Get Info. Delete anything in the Album Artist box (or set to X, apply and then clear to be absolutely certain). Close iTunes and reopen.

tt2

If you really don't like the auto-sort behaviour another approach is to alter the SortPrefixes.plist file as described in this thread, however the downside with that method is that you have to reapply it after each iTunes update.

tt2

Select all the tracks you want to edit. Get Info. Empty boxes represent either that different tracks have different values for that field, or that they are all blank, or that they contain the same combination of non-printing characters. Place your cursor in the field box and press backspace/delete. This ensures you have deleted any invisible characters that may be present. Note the checkmark against the box should now be enabled. When you press OK all the selected fields should be reset.

iTunes includes an "autosort" feature which ignores leading articles (a/an/the) so that, for example, "The Beatles" get sorted under B instead of T. The implied value of such autosorting is displayed as a light grey value in the column browser. If you want "The Beatles" listed under T you need to place "The Beatles" into the sort field to override the automatic process.

More at Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2

I obviously didn't make myself clear. I was trying to confirm and explain the way iTunes behaves. It is your expectation that needs to change. If the Artist is "The Beatles" then a blank value in Sort Artist is interpreted as "Beatles" and listed that way in a light grey in the browser. If you attempt to put an single space in the box to "clear" the field you will confuse the sort order as the item will be sorted on the value space. Turn off the sort columns if they irritate you. Or use them to control order of things you do want arranged differently but live with the greyed out values. E.g. Put "Bowie, David" in to sort "David Bowie" under B. If it is just the grey that annoys you could explicity put in the value of "Beatles" which would have the same sorting effect but display in black.

BTW The article I linked to warns against trying to merge different things with the same sort value...

tt2

In your example, "The Utopian Sea of clouds" defaults to a Sort Album of "Utopian Sea of clouds" (no "The").

As tt2 noted, it's light gray meaning iTunes defaults it this way. You cannot delete this. If you want it sorted as The Utopian Sea of clouds, that is what you need to put in Sort Album.

Songs, artists and albums the The & A at the beginning, default to a Sort name without A or The.

You have eplanined yourself perfectly clearly. 🙂

What you are seeing is the correct behaviour. There is nothing to fix. The sort fields are not supposed to go completely blank if their partner starts with A, An, The, or local equivalents. I'm guessing from your name you might be Spanish, in which case the list of "ignored" words at the start of a text field is a, an, el, la, las, los, the, un, una, unas, unos.

Perhaps this will clear things up...

Just turn off the sort fields and ignore them. If things are sorted the way that you want then you don't need to review the contents.

tt2

At a guess you've still got rouge spaces in the sorting fields for those, or iTunes has failed to transfer the corrections. Select the albums involved, Get Info., clear all the sorting fields, or fill in with a dummy X, apply, and then clear. Manually remove the items from the iPhone, then sync.

tt2

Likewise with An and also equivalent articles in other regions.

tt2