Sorting not sorting?

Help & Support
1

I'm still back on 11.19 x 64. Today as a result of a failed backup I went to see if my backup drive was full. I also have Windows 10 set to backup file changes and having a large amount of data in that folder I was curious what was being saved. I simply tried to sort the column by the size and nothing happened. There were only 3 files but the directory showed way more bytes than I was seeing by looking at these files. At the folder level I also tried to sort to see if that was the biggest folder but no luck nothing happened no matter what column I tried to sort on or which direction. There's no padlock so it's not a locked format.

I finally out of curiosity went to my e: drive to see if it was something specific to my USB drive which is f:. I found a directory full of folders and again tried to sort on any column. Nothing doing. I switched directories to one with a smaller amount of files and again no way was anything sorting. I went into more of a user folder an attempted a sort and immediately it sorted. This is bizarre. I have never seen this type of behavior before.

One of the directories I tried sorting on F: F:\FileHistory\Todd\ASUSG73-WIN10X6\Data$OF I went to E:\Users\Todd\VirtualBox VMs which had two large files that wouldn't sort and I finally went back F:\FileHistory\Todd\ASUSG73-WIN10X6\Data$OF and tried again with no luck

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So here's my windows user directory which says it's sorted by date but it's not:

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and finally my screen capture directory that also says it's sorted by date and it is:
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2

It looks like you have the Keep folders sorted alphabetically option turned on in the format for that folder (Folder / Folder Options / Display tab).

3

Hmmm. I do have that set on "custom", which should really be called default, but I don't recall setting it and I don't ever recall not being able to override it by sorting on another column. I would think that the setting would be an initial one but you are telling me it's an override of anything else?

4

If that option is on then folders are always sorted alphabetically irrespective of the actual sort order. That's the whole point of it.

5

What would I do to have the folders sorted unless I sorted on something else?

6

Turn off that option, then they'll be sorted by the same criteria as files.

7

OK thanx.