Opening files window in date modified order?

[Lololopoulos]

Hello,
I am a recent mac convert and I've run into quite a few problems with my macbook air recently but I gladly found all the answers I needed, well, except this one. Here I thank you for all your help.

The problem I have is that whenever I'm trying to open a file in an application, for example Word or an attachment for an e-mail, the files can only be viewed in the alphabetical order.


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To find the files I'm looking for I have to fish through my entire huge library of files or picture. In windows, you can always sort the order of the files in a certain window to be whatever way you like, but here it seems impossible to change the order to anything other than alphabetical.

Anybody have any idea how to do it? It would make my life a lot easier as Im used to relying on windows' date modified order to find things I need in my folders, now I don't have it anymore it feels very inconvenient.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Press CMD+2 to switch to LIST VIEW.

 

[Lololopoulos]

Press CMD+2 to switch to LIST VIEW.

Ok, with list view, I all I see are file names. If i'm looking for a certain picture this is not gonna help. Is there anyway I can see the picture thumbnails in date modified order?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Ok, with list view, I all I see are file names. If i'm looking for a certain picture this is not gonna help. Is there anyway I can see the picture thumbnails in date modified order?

Not that I know of, but you could use QuickLook in the "Open File" dialog to view them.

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[Lololopoulos]

Not that I know of, but you could use QuickLook in the "Open File" dialog to view them.

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

Thanks very much for the reply. I guess I'll have to come up with a new way to organized my files and pictures. Lacking the ways of sorting files is the thing i dislike the most about mac os. it almost makes me want to go back to windows.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks very much for the reply. I guess I'll have to come up with a new way to organized my files and pictures. Lacking the ways of sorting files is the thing i dislike the most about mac os. it almost makes me want to go back to windows.

Maybe you should look into some photo organising software?

I actually like the way Mac OS X handles files and the file and folder structure, but it may need some time to get accustomed to.
Mac OS X is not for everyone I guess, though Lion gets OS X closer to everyone.

 

[Lololopoulos]

Maybe you should look into some photo organising software?

the photo browsing experience actually is another huge pain in the neck for me. i like to browse photos in the date modified order. This is precisely a lot of the photo browsing softwares cannot do. I just don't understand why. so frustrating.

any advice on how to organize your files and photos? i'd love to hear from you since you said you like the way mac organizes the files. right now i'm nowhere near that place. lol but i'm willing to learn.

thanks!!

 

[chown33]

To find the files I'm looking for I have to fish through my entire huge library of files or picture. In windows, you can always sort the order of the files in a certain window to be whatever way you like, but here it seems impossible to change the order to anything other than alphabetical.

Anybody have any idea how to do it? It would make my life a lot easier as Im used to relying on windows' date modified order to find things I need in my folders, now I don't have it anymore it feels very inconvenient.

Thanks in advance!!

Maybe the problem is with Word. I don't have it or use it, so I'm not sure.

However, in the programs I do use, the Open... file dialog has a Name column and a Date Modified column when it displays as a List view. Click the Data Modified column header and it will sort by data modified. Click the same header again and it will reverse the order (oldest first to newest first, or vice versa).

The List view is displayed by clicking the middle icon of the triple-icon set located to the right of the fwd/back arrows.

If Word doesn't show the Date Modified column, try dragging the dialog window to be larger, using the size-adjuster in the lower-right corner of the window.


You can also use Finder to sort things in a Finder window, then drag that item onto the Open dialog. The Open dialog then shows the folder containing the item. It may or may not select the item (some apps don't do this).

A Finder window can be a Find window, from the Finder > File menu > Find menu item. You can type in search criteria, such as a range of dates, Kind is Image, etc. Then as above, drag the item onto the Open dialog in the desired app.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

the photo browsing experience actually is another huge pain in the neck for me. i like to browse photos in the date modified order. This is precisely a lot of the photo browsing softwares cannot do. I just don't understand why. so frustrating.

any advice on how to organize your files and photos? i'd love to hear from you since you said you like the way mac organizes the files. right now i'm nowhere near that place. lol but i'm willing to learn.

thanks!!

I invested in Lightroom to organise my digital photos, as I have a lot of them (23.000+). I sort them in yearly catalogues in Lightroom and have them put into to daily folders.
A photo taken on November 5th, 2006 is located under the following folder structure.
Photography HDD 1 (I have two other backups of the same HDD)

1. Raw Material (folder in root directory)

Digital Raw Material (sub folder of Raw Material, for my digital photographs, as I have a lot of analog photos and slides scanned in another folder called Analog Raw Material)

2006 (the year)

2006 - 11 (year - month)

2006-11-05 (year - month - day)​

I don't know if that helps you.

I also sort my written documents in DropBox (thus it is backed up externally) and all my other stuff has its own HDD.
The important data (video footage and photographs) are backed up onto two other HDDs via CarbonCopyCloner on a weekly basis.

But as I am a slob, it took me a while to get organised, and there is still some chaos in my files (music), but that is due to my handling on not Mac OS X.

 

[Lololopoulos]

Maybe the problem is with Word. I don't have it or use it, so I'm not sure.

However, in the programs I do use, the Open... file dialog has a Name column and a Date Modified column when it displays as a List view. Click the Data Modified column header and it will sort by data modified. Click the same header again and it will reverse the order (oldest first to newest first, or vice versa).

The List view is displayed by clicking the middle icon of the triple-icon set located to the right of the fwd/back arrows.

You can also use Finder to sort things in a Finder window, then drag that item onto the Open dialog. The Open dialog then shows the folder containing the item. It may or may not select the item (some apps don't do this).

A Finder window can be a Find window, from the Finder > File menu > Find menu item. You can type in search criteria, such as a range of dates, Kind is Image, etc. Then as above, drag the item onto the Open dialog in the desired app.

Hello Chown33!
Thank you very much for your response.
The list view you mentioned does provide the sorting option of date modified in "open" dialogue box, but the short-coming being i can only see the file names. Without thumbnails those names don't mean anything to me. However this way, I'll know approximately where a photo is located in this list and by doing quickview I can find it by trial-and-error with no more than 10 tries up & down usually. That's what i've been doing lately.

But you mentioned that I can drag and drop a certain file from Finder to the "open" dialogue box. This is an a lot easier way which i didn't know of. I just tried it and works great. I guess i'll have to do a little extra work every time to work around this issue.

Thanks again for your help!!

 

[Lololopoulos]

I invested in Lightroom to organise my digital photos, as I have a lot of them (23.000+). I sort them in yearly catalogues in Lightroom and have them put into to daily folders.

I also sort my written documents in DropBox (thus it is backed up externally) and all my other stuff has its own HDD.
The important data (video footage and photographs) are backed up onto two other HDDs via CarbonCopyCloner on a weekly basis.

Thank you!! I will give those 2 apps a look. Still struggling with photo browsing.

 

[chown33]

The list view you mentioned does provide the sorting option of date modified in "open" dialogue box, but the short-coming being i can only see the file names. Without thumbnails those names don't mean anything to me. However this way, I'll know approximately where a photo is located in this list and by doing quickview I can find it by trial-and-error with no more than 10 tries up & down usually. That's what i've been doing lately.

You can flip between views by clicking one of the 3 View-type icons. The Column View icon will show a preview of a selected file. So you can flip to List view sorted by Modified Date to see files ordered by date, then select a file to hilite it, then click the Column View icon and a preview will appear. Flip back to List View and you'll be back in List View sorted by date.

 

[basher]

Would using 'search' in the upper right of the window help you to narrow your focus on the files you want to find/look at?

 

[timmousseau]

I am having a similar issue following an upgrade from 10.6 ro Yosemite while using word. Word FILE OPEN defaults to listing Name, Size, Kind and Date Added for file attributes. However, it seems that when opening from an USB drive, DATE ADDED is not an attribute that is used. My previous Word version/setup used File Modified rather than Date Added and so I was able to sort by date.

So the question is how do I change the file open view options to include Date Created or Date Modified from within Word running on Yosemite? It is not s problem from within Finder where a right-flight int he finder window pops up a list of file view attributed that can be used. But I can not bring up a similar menu from within the Word File Open window. Any ideas? Yes, I know this sounds trivial but it is bugging the heck out of me!

thanks

Tim

 

[satcomer]

I think about this and something that comes to mind is Notifications seem to be tied to SpotLight scanning. So read the Apple Support site Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes and reset the Spotlight database to see if it helps on your affected Volume. Good Luck.

 

[timmousseau]

I think about this and something that comes to mind is Notifications seem to be tied to SpotLight scanning. So read the Apple Support site Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes and reset the Spotlight database to see if it helps on your affected Volume. Good Luck.

Hmmm... OK, I just tried adding and removing the external USB drive using SPOTLIGHT privacy. Immediately after adding it, this volume disappeared from my Finder window and I can not seem to get it to display in the device list now.. but it is there and I can view it the through the Mac Pro device.

But the question really is how do I change the file descriptions in the File Open menu of Word within Yosemite to show Date Modified or Date Created? In Finder I can right click on the bar at the top of the file listing and add Date Created or Date Last opened (etc) as an option of the file viewer bar. But this does not seem to work in the word file open window. Any thoughts? (also , how do I get the USB volume listed back in the main Devices listing on Finder!). Again sorry for the naive questions...