OSX Folder Sorting Criteria When Dates Are Used As Folder Names

Not that I'm aware of.

To have the Finder sort by date names, you would have to use YYYY/MM/DD format (2016/06/01), which is pretty standard in accounting, etc.

Note also that Finder can sort by date created, date modified and date added time stamps. If you don't see these column in a Finder list view window, right click on any column heading and check what you want to see.

The Finder treats these names as Alphanumeric fields, and sorts them accordingly. I sometimes refer to this as "part-number-order". A11 may come before A1.

If you change your date specification in System preferences > Languages&Regions

... to Year-Month-Day, the files should be named in and saved in almost date-order. 2016-Jan-11filename may still occasionally sort before 2016-jan-1filename, depending on the letter than comes next after the date.

No. Your only option is to rename the folders (or stick with what you have) I name my photo folders by date too but I use year,month, day format. You might find that Better Finder Rename (a batch naming program) might be helpful in your renaming process.

Nope. These algoryihms work recursively and don't understand about the name itself (it's not like a cell in Excel which expects different types of inputs).

That's why it is always recommended to name the files as the other user said: "year-monh-day". That way you can sort by date order with ease, although it is not the exact format you want.

If you choose to go that way, you can get a buld rename program to rename the existing folders for you, or program a shell script to do it.

Cheers!