How To Sort Files in the Finder on a Mac

To get the most from the Mac Finder you should know how to quickly sort your files in the Finder window. Learn how to do it in the various Finder views and some tips and tricks.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at sorting in the Finder. 
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So when you're looking at files in the Finder it's very common to want to sort them so you can easily find things. Now before you sort you should note which Finder view you're using because, of course, sorting is going to look very different in each view. You've got Icon View, List View, Column View, and Gallery View. But if you're sorting you probably want List View. So we'll start there but we'll take a brief look at the other views as well. 
When you're in List View everything is in columns and you see the column titles at the top. In this case we've got Name, Date Modified, Size, and Kind. You can adjust the column widths by grabbing the line, right there, like that. You can even move them around. So I can move Size to the left here to be in front of Date Modified if I want. 
Now to Sort you can go to View and then Sort By. Before we do that I want to look at this item above it. Use Groups. If you have Use Groups turned on then everything is grouped together like this. When people have trouble sorting one of the most common reasons is that they don't realize that they have Used Groups turned On and then they are using Grouped By rather than Sort By. So if you just want one long list of files and you want to sort them make sure Used Groups is turned Off. So with that Off let's go back to View and then Sort By. Then we can sort by a variety of different things here. So we see the names of these four columns. There's Name, there's Last Modified By, there's Size, and there's also Kind. We can choose which one we want to sort by. A checkmark will appear next to the one we've chosen. 
There are also a variety of Keyboard Shortcuts you can use to quickly change your sorting order. So if I wanted to switch to, say, Kind I can do that. Now I can see the Kind column is bolded right there instead of the Name column. If I look at the names they are all over the place. But Kind is actually sorted correctly. Let's close this folder up here so we're just looking at one level. We can see all the folders are first and then we have applications, Jpeg images, Keynote, Microsoft. Notice how they are in alphabetical order. So it makes sense. I can go here to View and then Sort By and say go back to Name and now things are sorted alphabetically by name.
Notice here on the right side of whichever column is sorted is this little arrow pointing Up. That means it is sorting in ascending order. In other words A is first, Z is last. I can click right there and change that order. So now Z is first and A is last. You can do that for any column. So, for instance, if I were to go to Size here you could see its sorting with descending order. So we've got the largest files first. But if I click here I can see now the smallest file is first. In fact the folders, which technically don't have size at all, they are first and then you've got the files here with the tiniest one at the top. I'll show you in a minute how to actually have folders included in the Size sort like this. So you don't actually need to use the View Menu at all. Instead you can just click on the column that you want and then click on the arrow next to it to change the order. That's as easy as it gets! You can just sort that way and it is very easy to change. 
If you want to add more columns you can. All you need to do is Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse in any of these titles here and then you get this checklist here and you can add another one. Let's add Date Created. Now that is added as a column. I can sort by that and change the order as well. I can remove any the same way. You actually get the same options if you go to View and then Show View Options here. It will show you the columns that you can have. This, of course, is specific to the List View. You only get these columns with the various pieces of info for each file in List View. So here I can check and uncheck these. 
Now once you've got things sorted you can actually use the keyboard to jump to things. So, for instance, if I wanted to jump to the letter M here I can just press m on the keyboard and you can see how it takes me to the first file that starts with M. If I wanted to get more specific I can. See here I've got several different things under S. If I wanted to jump right to this one, it's SC, so I do s and then quickly c after that and it will jump right to that file. So it makes it really easy to get around inside of a sorted list. That, of course, doesn't work so well if the list isn't sorted by Name. 
Now how does this work if we're in other views. For instance if we're in Column View right here we can see everything in Columns and a big preview column here to the right. Note I've got no columns here at the top because the only information I can see about each file in the list is its name. I have to select a file and then I can see information about it here in the preview pane. But if I go to View, Sort By I still have all these same options. So, for instance, I can Sort By Kind. Now I can see everything put together by Kind. Now, if I were to Open up a folder right here then the sorting would continue inside of this folder. So let's go to one here that has various different types of files and you can see here the JPEG's are all together because everything I'm seeing in this whole view is sorted by Kind. If I change that to Name then you could see everything is sorted by Name in all the columns. 
Now let's switch over to Icon View. So in Icon View you can actually place things where you want. So I can move this file and put it anywhere I want. This is a completely manual view where everything can be placed in two-dimensional space however you want it. However, if you go to View and then Sort By and turn on one of these sorting options then you no longer can change where the files are. I can do it by Name here and everything is going to be sorted by name starting at the top left corner, going over to the right, and then to the next row and the next row. If I try to drag a file around it's just going to snap back to where it is. If you have a Sorting Option turned On that's how Icon View works. If you want to go back to manual placing everything then you want to go to None and now it returns to all the individual locations for all these files. 
You do have a way to temporarily sort that allows you to then keep changing the position. If you go to View and then Cleanup By, and then say Cleanup By Name, it will move everything's position to an alphabetical order in this case. But, then I can continue by moving things around like I want. So it is a little different than Sort By. Cleanup By just does it once and sets positions allowing you to continue changing things. Sort By will keep things sorted no matter how much you drag them. As you add new files or remove them from this the sort order will be maintained. 
Now Gallery View, of course, works the same basic way. You've got a list here horizontally at the bottom and you can sort by anything that you want. So I can put, for instance, all the JPEG images together really easily by sorting by JPEG, like that. Or I can keep it sorted by Name. It is just sorting this horizontal list instead of a vertical list that you see in Column View. 
Now I mentioned before that if you want to see Folder Sizes you can. If I Sort By Kind here it is going to put all the folders at the top because it doesn't have a size for these folders. Now the reason for that is because you can have lots of folders with lots of files inside and it can take a long time to calculate the total of all the files. So, to make things nice and fast for you when viewing your files folder sizes aren't calculated by default. But you can go to View and then Show View Options. Then there is an option right here, Calculate All Sizes. Turn that On and then it will calculate all the sizes for all the folders. If you're sorting by size it will actually sort them accordingly. Let's go and do that. I'll do Size, Sorting and you can see now the folders actually fit in with the files where they are supposed to be. You can bring up that menu again, the shortcut is Command J, and turn that Off. 
Now do note that when there is a tie the tie is always broken by the File Name. So, for instance here if I were to add a Column Tags and then had a Column here called Tags and Sort By Tags you could see it puts all the ones with just the red tag together and to break the tie you can see it is in alphabetical order. Example, New, and Sample here. 
Also note that sorting does a really good job handling numbers. Let me show you. I'm going to add a bunch of files here. So I've added these three files and I put a number in front of them, sorting alphabetically or it is actually taking the number there. But if it was sorting alphabetically, if I were to change this to 21, then alphabetically it should still go 1, 21, 3. However, it's not going to do that. Instead it is going to put 21 afterwards because the Finder is smart enough to realize that these are numbers and it's going to put them in numerical order as you would expect. So there is no reason to do things like adding a zero before a number like that to get the sorting order right. That was something we had to do on computers twenty, thirty years ago. But not today. The same thing for other files like these here. If I were to change this to 21, like that, note that it sorted correctly. It doesn't put 21 before 3 even though technically in alphabetical order it should.
So there's a look at sorting in the Finder. One of the most important things I want to get across though is it is very easy to change the sort and then change it back. So, for instance if you normally have a folder sorted by name, don't be afraid to change it to being sorted by size to find a file and then just go back to sorting it by name. It's really just a few clicks to do all of that. If it makes it faster to find the files you need then do it. Don't get stuck on keeping sorting the same all the time. It is easy to change and change back. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “How To Sort Files in the Finder on a Mac”

Sheldon

8 months ago

Thanks bunches

Tom Booth

Is there a way to force list view sorting to always put folders on top - sorted alphabetically with files not in a folder also alphabetically below the folders?

Gary Rosenzweig

Tom: The setting is in Finder, Settings, Advanced.

Linda

Thank you Gary
It’s very useful But I have to go over many times to understand and needs lots practice on it I let you know if I have learn to do it right.

Mellissa

I want to view who modified a document last. However, the "last modified by" is greyed out. I can't select the box. Help?

Mellissa: Files don't keep track of who modified them like that. I'm not sure of your situation where you see "Last Modified By" grayed out. In the Menu Bar under View, Sort By? What other things are going on?

Thank you so much for answering my question! I took a screen shot to show you what I was talking about, but it won't upload. When you click View/Show View Options it brings up check boxes of different columns you can add/remove (among other things). One of check boxes is "Last Modified By." However, on my computer this is greyed out and I can't select it. Do you know how to fix this?

Mellissa: If it is grayed out, then it means that the situation you are in can't use that option. So think about the situation. What location, which Finder view, what other options are selected, etc.

How To Sort Files in the Finder on a Mac

Comments: 8 Responses to “How To Sort Files in the Finder on a Mac”

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