show numbers before letters

All you need to do is adjust your definition of "normally" and all will be fine. 😁

There is a rather outdated support document HT2642 - Archived - iTunes 7.3: Changes in music sort order which tells most of the story, although proper value ordering of numeric values got broken ages ago and hasn't been fixed. 😕

I fix the order of my numerics by padding sort values with leading zeros. Add a couple a's in front of those and you could force the numerics to the top of the list.

tt2

You can reverse the whole column sort order by clicking on the top of the column a second time. Of course then it will reverse alphabetically.

If it really bugs you try adding a space before the number.

turingtest2 wrote:

Add a couple a's in front of those and you could force the numerics to the top of the list.

I think spaces will also force to the top and won't as noticeably affect the appearance. I do that to force files to the top of name order on my Mac.

I can't recall which build of iTunes you run, but here in the world of iTunes 11.3 on Windows leading spaces get ignored, even in the sort fields...

Sort fields of, for example, a000002 and a000010 would make 2 & 10 come at the top of the list, and in the right order. How many digits are needed will depend on what is in the library. I manage with four digits for artists/album artists and six for album titles, though "200 Million Thousand" by Black Lips nearly caused a rethink. Thankfully I've nothing else with a title larger than 200,000 so that is its sort value.

tt2

This is exactly what I was looking for and worked like a charm. Thanks!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2