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Mike the Knife · Apr 30, 2007, 12:58 PM

Can I sort, in column view, alphabetically but have folders appear first like in Windows XP? Thanks!

Madrag · Apr 30, 2007, 01:24 PM

I don't think so.
OS X orders alphabetically and so, the name of the folder won't be an exception.

You can always use an underscore at the beginning of the folder name, it's lame, but that's one way...

If you're in list view, you could sort by kind, this way the folders are grouped together, but there are no guarantees that these will be on the top...

abbaZaba · Apr 30, 2007, 01:37 PM

when I first got into OSX, the fact that folders were not on the top of column views pissed me off to no end. luckily I found a solution and it has been working well for me ever since.

macosxhints.com - Change the position of folders in sort by Kind views

you sort by Kind but everything is still alphabetical

abbaZaba · Apr 30, 2007, 01:41 PM

I expect many thanks and praise for this

Madrag · Apr 30, 2007, 01:45 PM

That's good for the list view, not the column view, where you cannot change the sort order.
The OP said "in column view", did he/she mean "list view" instead?

abbaZaba · Apr 30, 2007, 02:21 PM

nuts, guess I didn't read it too thoroughly.

column view sucks anyway

KP* · Apr 30, 2007, 02:39 PM

This drove me nuts when I first switched and although I have been a happy Mac user for over five years, I still only tolerate it. To me a folder is not a file -- it is like a pathway to other files, and if I'm looking for a file in a subfolder, I'm just "passing through" the top folder and don't want its files in the way of getting to the subfolders. I hate Windows for a lot of reasons but the Finder makes Windows Explorer look good. It would be interesting to study the brains of the people who decided how it would work.

Mike the Knife · Apr 30, 2007, 03:30 PM

I meant column view, but it might be worth switching to list view to get this done. I'm going to try this out. Thanks.

Madrag · Apr 30, 2007, 06:20 PM

thanks for clearing that you meant column view.

I think the finder should have a way to specify the sort order when in column view...

rehoot · May 7, 2007, 11:19 AM

Another approach might be to use color labels to label all directories with a given color, then use Finder Preferences to give that a name that begins with an underline, like "_Directories." If you sort by "Label" (add it to the Finder display using View->Show View Options), the directories will sort together.

This is not practical unless you can keep the labels relatively updated and can initialize the labels in batch mode. There was a program caled [TT]setlabel[\TT] that could set the labels from the command line, but it hasn't been maintained in a while. If somebody is really motivated, maybe this script could be modified to keep the colors up to date on directories:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...70408193708936