itunes 11 not sorting songs alphabetically

Hi. In iTunes 11 the only way to decide how to sort your music is using the "Songs" tab. The other tabs "Albums", "Artists", "Genres" do not let you decide how to sort your music, there are no settings available to do this. I hope this was helpful for you. If not just ask again!

Why would apple remove the ability to sort songs in a playlist. I have my top 100 songs playlist its in order by song. I name the songs" 01 - the song name" and so on till I get to 100. The playlist puts it in artist order not the song name title (file name title) all previous versions did this. WHY would you take that away???? I ask do people in Apple who program iTunes actually use it. This is a step back words. WHY???

medic6578 wrote:

Why would apple remove the ability to sort songs in a playlist.

They haven't. The question was not about "Playlists", it was about the Artist view.

You need to stop for a minute and take a step backwards (back words - that's funny!).

If you're looking in a Playlist, you still have the same options to arrange songs as before. If you arranged songs in a particular order, then to see them in that order, you need to set the left column as the sort option, as shown in my screenshot. Click on the top of the column.

Stepping backwards, in prevous versions the songs were in file order so "01 - song name", "02 - song name", "03 - song name" were displayed in that order order. No they are no longer in that order. Playlists that were in order after upgrade are no longer in order. So the order in which they show in file manager is not the order that iTunes displays and it will not allow me to put it in that order. That's backwards. Actuallywhen I click the track order it is some strange order that doesn't follow the track order the file name order or any logical order. Just syaing that before the upgrade it was fine all in track order (the file name order) top 40 in oder the number one song number one not 18 beacause iTunes decided to put it there and after the upgrade all wacky... no rhyme or reason to track order...

If you have the little arrow pointing upwards, you can then move songs within a Plylist to the order you want.

One thing to note, in my screenshot, I have actually highlighted a Smart Playlist because in that Library, I don't have any regular Playlists.

A Smart Playlist cannot have its order changed by you. The rules of the list control it. So if your badly bahaving Playlist is a Smart Playlist, that will be why you cannot chnage its order.

Yes it should put them in track order like it use to but it doesn't. also i changed one song picture and it change all album photos in the entire playlist to that one image. BACKWARDS dude.....

Apple should be proud they have just Microsofted iTunes. WHYYYYYY

the fiend wrote:

A Smart Playlist cannot have its order changed by you. The rules of the list control it. So if your badly bahaving Playlist is a Smart Playlist, that will be why you cannot chnage its order.

Point of order! 👿

If you select the first column of numbers as the active sort column in a Playlist or a Smart Playlist you can change the order. You can't change the order in Playlist Folder, nor indeed is there an initial column of numbers to select.

For the benefit of medic et al the conventional sort order is achived by selecting the Album column for sorting, tapping again (if necessary) until it reads Album by Artist, and making sure the small black triangle is pointed upwards. You can of course choose any other column heading that will respond. 😉

tt2

dude you don't get it... before update so ngs in order after update not in order anymore. songs in order of file name or track order. after update not in that order anymore. so my top 40 becomes top any any order other than the offical order lets say apple order. which is by no means offical. If i view in artist list it is in correct order but only one album art shows, fail. now when I sync it to anything its all out ouf order, The list order is all wacky and thats the order it syncs other devices with, fail, so its a step backward. Just so you under statnd BEFORE UPDATE all was fine everything worked GREAT. After UPGRADE NOT fine all syncs out of order. Also miss album art view another fail...

Also when it syncs it only syncs the last album art work and it syncs that art work to all the images. So 40 songs and the same art work for all songs. Once again BERFORE update it all worked after UPDATE big fail. The only thing different is new UPDATE.

turingtest2 wrote:

Point of order! 👿

Thanks Steve.

I rather wish I hadn't said anything. I particularly don't like being called "dude".

I get that you're not happy. If you want to roll back to the previous version see instructions here.

If you want help to make sense of the changes that have happened with iTunes 11 you'll need to do a better job of explaining what you think is wrong. A playlist in iTunes is an ordered collection of tracks. The left-hand column of numbers is the stored play order but the same list can be sorted on other columns. If you find an order you like you can right-click on the playlist name and click copy to play order. iTunes has never paid any attention to the file path when it comes to sorting playlists. The initial order is the order in which you add things to the list.

It may be that iTunes 11 has started presenting playlists sorted on a different column but I suspect that the previous play order is preserved if you look for it. I haven't had a chance to see for certain. I'm generally not interested in the specific order of my playlists so I can't say I've notice a problem.

I have no idea what your complaints about artwork are about. Playlists don't have artwork associated with them albums do. Perhaps your message would be clearer with some screenshots.

tt2

i think i understand, i have sorta the same issue. i had various artist folders with bands that i only have a few songs from. no track order, in "songs" theyre in alphabetical, in artists its a jumbled mess. i just wanna see my stuff alphabetically, not search like a fool for it

gimp1124 wrote:

i think i understand, i have sorta the same issue. i had various artist folders with bands that i only have a few songs from. no track order, in "songs" theyre in alphabetical, in artists its a jumbled mess. i just wanna see my stuff alphabetically, not search like a fool for it

iTunes is expecting every track to have a name, an artist, an album and a track number. With those details it can present an album-based view of the tracks in various listing modes. There will be a logic to the jumbled mess, just not necessarily your preferred logic. I don't have to time to try and work out what it is just now, but if you want iTunes to list 3 random tracks by an artist as if they were an album, in a specific order, then feed it the details. E.g. Album="Misc. Tracks", Song A=Track 1, Song B=Track 2 etc.

tt2

thats how ive been starting to do it. my only issue is theyre mixed albums of artist "Various Artists" album "classic rock" etc. if i got theu and number them in alpha order (which is easily seen in songs mode) then if i add a new track to say Classic Rock in the future, ill have to shift the numbers down accordingly