Since I have updated OS X to Yosemite, my file sorting has been... odd. This is both in Finder and Evernote. I have a folder of folders named with a single letter to test the sorting. It goes like this:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
X <=
I
J
K
Q <=
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
Y
Z
W <=
Is there any explanation for this?
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012), Yosemite 10.10
What are you asking it to sort by?
Good question. I'm sorting by name.
In Finder, there are two different places to control the sorting. You can do Finder > Arrange By and choose name. Or, and this more typical, you do Finder > Arrange By > None and click the name while files are listed by name.
The files are arranged by name. There is an error somewhere. I have also done a full scan and no malware has been detected.
Change to Arrange By > None
I've been using a mac for 3 years – I honestly don't think this is a user error. What can be causing this behaviour? The same sorting behaviour is in Evernote.
I never said it was user error. Recent versions of OS X have been resetting the "Arrange By" setting to something other than "None". That is "arrange by", not "sort by". From Apple's perspective, those are two different things and really aren't what you or I would think they are. For example, there is no "sort by" option in a list view. There is only an "arrange by" option. Yet for the desktop, and the desktop only, there is a "sort by". How one is supposed to "sort" icons on one or more displays is a riddle that only Apple thinks it has solved. The reason why "arrange by" > Name doesn't actually do that is another mystery.
Also, I notice that you are actually talking about Yosemite. You shouldn't be doing that. I don't have Yosemite on this machine to test. I don't doubt it is doing something unexpected. File a bug report and maybe it will be fixed 10.11. Until then, change your Arrange By to None and see if it improves.
Thanks for the insight. I filed a bug report on a previous Yosemite beta version. I assume it is a rare example otherwise I would assume such an obvious bug to have been reported many times over.
I'll have to wait for the stable release for this machine to be sure.
don't worry, you're not alone 😟
i'm running 2 macs ( macbook pro ) identically set up and upgraded yesterday
while on one machine all is working as expected i have exactly the same weird behavior you brought up here on the other machine.
arrange by name in column view would not sort correctly while on the other machine it does.
so this is one of the worst kind of bugs if it's either intermittent or not across all users and devices the same. there will be many answers of the likes
you got first from people who don't have the issue like myself on one machine ( 2 meters appart, same network, all same )
however sooner or later there will be more users encountering the issue and therefore it will be taken care of hopefully, just bad that i depend on finder
order because file structures are an integrated part of the work which i do for my customers. for now the only way is to switch to list view where all is normal
and go back to column view when the task is done.
further want to mention that folders are on the bottom where alphabetical ordering fails while on the other machine folders are in their alpha-numeric place like
they always were.
also further it's not unimportant that among folders the order is correct while only the files don't arrange correctly beside the fact that files come first on the
malfunctioning system.
what i'll try is to download the update again and re-install, but only after trying out a few other things first
That's a great catch!
FWIW I've had this problem on my laptop ever since switching to Yosemite (I have only used the production versions) -- My Mac Pro is fine.
The laptop does have encryption turned on.
I think I found the solution ... this has been driving me crazy for days now.
There are apparently two levels to this:
- While browsing a folder (not the "Desktop") - go to FINDER : VIEW : SHOW VIEW OPTIONS (Command-J)
- You'll note that there is "Arrange By" and "Sort By" options ... both of these need to be set.
Apparently, mine was set to
Arrange By: Name
Sort By: Kind
Sorting in this manner was causing things to be out of alphabetical order within column view.
I changed to
Arrange By: None
Sort By: Name
and it did the trick.
Cheers!
This solved it for me!
great find.
does anyone have any idea, what "Arrangy by" then actually means, if not sorting and not overriding sorting?
Thank you soo much! I constantly work with multiple versions of my projects and it's crucial to have them sorted (arranged) by last modified and this problem was bugging me for quite a while.
Apple works in a mysterious but some time really irritating ways )
Incorrect sorting
