iTunes 11 not sorting multi-disc audiobooks by disc number

I was having the same issue only with multiple books of the same author. I ended up changing the Author field to have both the Title and the Author. This caused the files to be restructured in a folder for the separate work rather having all of the audio files put into just the one author folder...

Select "List" in the menu below the time bar and the tracks are sorted by Disc first then Track.

I am seeing the same problem. In iTunes 10 my books were ordered like :

Disk 1 Track 1

Disk 1 Track 2

...

Disk 5 Track 1

Now I'm seeing:

Disk 1 Track 1

Disk 2 Track 1

Disk 3 Track 1

Not very helpful. Yes the list view does show the correct order, but for all my books. So they are all mashed together. What I need is the list view, but per book like it used to be.

Even worse, if I just double click on a book to start listening, I get the new bad ordering where the tracks are all scrambled. So to listen to anything I have to jump to list view, find my book and try to remember what track that I was on, and hope that my position was saved. Not cool.

I FOUND A SOLUTION!

go to the contents menu (sorry, have swedish itunes so just translating the menu from swedish, don't know if it's correct but Iäm sure you can figure it out), select "viewing alternatives" (top one) and then select "sort by: writer" and then: "writer". the problem seems to be that the default setting is sort by writer and then title, in which it sorts all the audiobook tracks by their titles and ignore the disc number. But if you do this, it takes the disc numbers into account!

good luck!

//Petter

I have the same problem...frustrating! I tried changing the view options and it didn't do anything to sort the tracks. Changing it to list does put the tracks in order, but I want to see each book, not a list of all my books. I have 94 audiobooks, I need them organized!

I tried the "list" option and it did work, but... if you have a lot of books it looks awful! No more can I open a single book and see it sorted correctly. Now there is a long list of chapters... it's very difficult to deal with. If I open just one book, it's a mess.

I agree with you. it is really awful.

And i think this is no big problem for the itunes programmer to change itunes and start the sorting with the cd numbers.

Its logical and should be standard.

But there was and is an similar problem with the sorting on the old ipods also and they never change it.

I wrote a longe time ago an email to the support for the ipod - audiobook problem, but they never anwser.

I'm having the same issues. I tried PetterCS's suggestion, but it didn't work. It sorted all the books in my Audiobooks section by Author, but it didn't fix the sort order of the tracks inside each audiobook.

Apple, please fix this issue ASAP!!!

Guys, I have the ultimate solution!

Use the following Applescript:

Embed Disc Number in Track Number v1.0
Applies selected tracks' disc number as hundreds digit in track numberShort link: http://dougscripts.com/461
date posted: July 14, 2009 - total downloads 926

you can find it at:
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

It is a reversible operation by definition!

Cheers!

Hey guys, sorry about the confusion, I discovered my trick didn't work either - what confused me was that when I select an audiobook and play it - the tracks play in the right order, even if their not sorted that way when I look at them! Very confusing! I also discovered that in my ipad, if I just pressed play it started playing stuff in the wrong order, BUT, if I pressed the symbol of the album up in the bar of the current song and then flip it around to get the list of tracks - they are sorted correctly according to disc number! THEN I can reselect the track I want and it will play in the right order. Don't know if this works on Iphone too... Anyway, it doesn't really solve the fact that apple has maybe a stupid mistake, but at least now I can listen to my audiobooks again.

Again, sorry for the confusion with the viewing options!

I have the same problem with itunes on windows, isthere any solution yet? It's really fustrating! It's really strange that multiple music album CD's are sorted correctly, why haven't Apple sorted this out?

This is the way Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen plays: The tracks playin the order which they appear!

Here's a helpful image to illustrate what I meant in my last post about getting it to play the right way on the ipad. Not that the tracks are sorted differently in imgs 1 and 3, number three being the one that takes disc number into account =)

This worked perfectly for me. Thank you Giacomo!

P.S. I also used PayPal to give DougScripts a $5 thank you.

Giacomo Italy

Guys, I have the ultimate solution!

Use the following Applescript:

Embed Disc Number in Track Number v1.0
Applies selected tracks' disc number as hundreds digit in track numberShort link: http://dougscripts.com/461
date posted: July 14, 2009 - total downloads 926

you can find it at:
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

It is a reversible operation by definition!

Cheers!

I did the above and it worked for me as well.