Making sense of digital photos

By: Don Edrington - North County Times | Sunday, March 19, 2006 8:34 PM PST ∞

Several readers have asked if there is a way to file their digital photos in an order other than alphabetically. They've noticed that icons on their Desktops can be rearranged any order they want, and ask how to do this in other folders.

Well, perhaps the upcoming new version of Windows will let us do this; but for now items will always be listed alphabetically. However, you can edit file names to make them appear in any order you prefer, by preceding the actual name with numbers.

For instance if you want Able, Baker, and Charlie to be listed as Baker, Charlie, and Able, change their names to, say, 1-Baker, 2-Charlie, and 3-Able. If your list contains hundreds of names, using three-digit numbers such, as 001 and 002, is recommended.

Most computer sorting systems put numbers ahead of alphabet characters, and certain punctuation marks ahead of numbers. My favorite way of bringing any file name to the top of a sorted list is to precede the name with one or more underscores. Thus, "_Zebra" will appear ahead of "Able" and "__Charlie" will precede both of them.

Any file name can be edited by right-clicking it and choosing Rename.

However, I prefer doing a single left-click on a name, waiting a second or two, and doing another left-click.

Speaking of alphabetizing, there are several "Sort Protocols" used by computer systems. A column of items in a spreadsheet, for instance, can be sorted many different ways. The default is "General," which uses the Symbol, Numeral, Alphabet character method described above.

However, a column can be pre-formatted to sort by Text, by Number, or by Date, as well as by several other criteria. Highlight a column by clicking on its alpha-header, and go to Format>Number or Format>Cell>Number, whereupon these options will appear.

Choosing the correct protocol is important when you want to sort, say, phone numbers or numeric parts-nomenclature as text rather than numbers.

To alphabetize a listing of items in MSWord, place your cursor at the beginning of the list and go to Table>Sort, whereupon Text, Number, and Date will be your sort options.

For sorting just part of a column, mouse-select it and do as above.

An interesting "sorting problem" I've heard described many times is in regard to a name such as Wagner insisting on being at the head of a list, rather than with the other W-names. In each case, an unnoticed blank space had been inserted before the rogue name, meaning it would always come first in any list.

Back to the question of arranging lists of all the digital photos we put on our hard drives these days, creating folders for various groups is essential. A folder can be created on your Desktop by right-clicking a blank area and choosing New>Folder. Creating a folder inside another folder is done by clicking File>New>Folder.

Folders can be named in many ways, including by date, to make them easier to find later on.

More tips can be found at www.pcdon.com and calls are welcome at (949) 646-8615.