organising things in date order on PC

JuneBow

I have in the process of updating my filing system on my cloudbased storage and PC and want to organise things chronologically.
However, if I have the dates
1.11.13
6.8.16
5.4.11
2013 comes before the 2011 date which comes before the 2016 date.
I have thought about doing it backwards
eg
2011.4.5
2013.11.1
2016.8.6
Is there a way of doing it so you just put the date in normally and the computer recognises it as a date rather than a number and it comes out in order?

getmore4less

the best way to sort chronologically is to use YYYYMMDDHHMMSS...

every sort there is gets it right without knowing they are dates.

JuneBow

getmore4less wrote: »

the best way to sort chronologically is to use YYYYMMDDHHMMSS...

every sort there is gets it right without knowing they are dates.

This "backwards" solution is the only one I have managed to come up with, but I was hoping I could do it the right way around.

Thanks for the reply.

droopsnoot

It all depends - are these file names, or folder names, or something else entirely? In a database, if you entered those values into a string field you'd get the same result, but if you entered them (in a valid format) into a date field, then it would be capable of sorting in "proper" date order.


If you're using these as filenames, then it's not going to work properly, but can't you sort the folder listings by "last modified date" and have that work for you?


With apologies if these aren't filenames and you meant something entirely different. The system will only deal with these things as dates if it knows they are dates, basically.

agrinnall

To my mind from a data perspective YYYYMMDDSS is the correct way round, anything else is fundamentally flawed. I have been using dates in this way for over 35 years, and I'm constantly annoyed by people who don't do it and don't seem to get why it is the sensible option.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

have you tried, select cells, then click, Format > Cells > Date, then select style you want, and then use the sort AZ or ZA arrows.

Le_Kirk

That will work in Excel but I assume the OP is talking something else, like file/folder if they are mentioning Cloud based storage.

AndyPix

JuneBow wrote: »

Is there a way of doing it so you just put the date in normally and the computer recognises it as a date rather than a number and it comes out in order?

No, unfortunately not.
The computer is ordering them alphabetically , and in that sense, numbers come before the start of the alphabet.
That is why your 1.11.13 is coming first, as it starts with 1 etc etc

John_Gray

AndyPix wrote: »

The computer is ordering them alphabetically , and in that sense, numbers come before the start of the alphabet.

To be really pedantic, the order is of the ASCII collating sequence, where numbers precede UPPER-CASE characters, which precede lower-case characters.
As for special characters, good luck!

cookie365

If you use Directory Opus someone has created a button that will sort filenames in dd-mm-yyyy format

https://resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20368&p=109302&hilit=filename+date+sort#p109302

esuhl

agrinnall wrote: »

To my mind from a data perspective YYYYMMDDSS is the correct way round, anything else is fundamentally flawed. I have been using dates in this way for over 35 years, and I'm constantly annoyed by people who don't do it and don't seem to get why it is the sensible option.

Ha ha! I know -- "normal" numbers have the most significant digit on the left, why don't dates?

The Americans tried to fix this with their mm/dd notation, but then they put the year at the end and it looks like they've just shoved the numbers in random order! So close, yet so far!