Sequencing via Category

[alfulton]

I purchased XYplorer because I found the following tip to force correct physical sequencing of copied files in some forum :
You can do this with XYplorer:
(1) Open the Catalog (Ctrl+F8)
(2) Right-click it and create a new Category
(3) Collect your files in that Category by drag-n-drop
(4) Now you can order them as you like inside the Category by drag-n-drop
(5) Right-click the Category and select "Copy All Items in Category"
(6) The items are now placed on the clipboard in the exact order you want them to be in. Now you copy them to any target using the Paste command. They will be copied in that order

This works fine for small numbers of files. My situation is that I have >700 files, correctly sequenced according to Vista by name. Drag-dropping into a new category, or Copy-Paste into new category produces unpredictable sequence within the category. Locating out-of-sequence entries and individually moving those entries is worse than tedious. If there were a way to enter items into a Category while enforcing logical = physical sequence, this would be a major timesaver.

Before anyone asks why I need to this, it is to place the files on an SD-card for use in a digital photo frame which apparently is not interested in the Windows logical sequence, but only the physical sequence.

Thus far, I have only been able to accomplish this via the XCOPY outside of XYplorer. This works, but is not as elegant as a possible solution within XYplorer.

Thank you.

[jacky]

I'm not sure what you mean by "correctly sequenced according to Vista by name", does XY not list the files in the right order? It surely can sort by Name as well, and you can even choose "Unsorted" to have them listed according to the file system/"physical" order.

This works fine for small numbers of files. My situation is that I have >700 files, correctly sequenced according to Vista by name. Drag-dropping into a new category, or Copy-Paste into new category produces unpredictable sequence within the category.

Actually, XY doesn't randomly put items on your Category, there is an order, and that it the same one as on List. If you drag&drop List items onto a Catalog category, items should be in the same order as they are on List, with one "exception" : it will start not by the first item on List, by the focused one (on which you started the d&d operation), and when reached the last item on List head back to the first. So, to have the exact same order you would actually need to male sure to start dragging by the first selected item on List.

Note that when you create a new Category using "Insert As New Category Here|Selected List Item(s)" items are then ordered the same as on List, regardless of which item on List has focus.

Hope this can help...

[j_c_hallgren]

My situation is that I have >700 files, correctly sequenced according to Vista by name. Drag-dropping into a new category, or Copy-Paste into new category produces unpredictable sequence within the category. Locating out-of-sequence entries and individually moving those entries is worse than tedious. If there were a way to enter items into a Category while enforcing logical = physical sequence, this would be a major timesaver.

Sorry, but I've read this a few times and it must be me, but I'm still not catching on to what the exact problem is...so...dumb question: Can "List Management"/Files on Clipboard be of any use in this to get desired seq, and then add from clipboard?

it is to place the files on an SD-card for use in a digital photo frame which apparently is not interested in the Windows logical sequence, but only the physical sequence.

I've got the same situation with a FM transmitter MP3 player for my car that uses std thumb drives for storage.

[graham]

If I understand this correctly, which I doubt, then you basically need to rename files so that they appear in your own desired order. This means that you need to be able to prefix a file name with a number and then move on to the next file and manually decide what its prefix should be so that it appears in order and so on. This would then agree with the op. sys sort order and your sequence. It would still require time to re-name each file though a script could probably help presenting and renaming from your input.

[alfulton]

Thanks to jacky for identifying what is apparently the problem.
I DID have all files correctly named, and showing in that sequence in the right-most panel. However, when I dragged the mouse from the top to the bottom, I did not return to the first item to begin the drag to the "SORT " category, and as jacky said, it began wherever my mouse was as I started dragging. Repeating the process, but dragging from the top worked just fine.

Thanks to all for helpful suggestions.

Al Fulton

[admin]

Thanks to jacky for identifying what is apparently the problem.
I DID have all files correctly named, and showing in that sequence in the right-most panel. However, when I dragged the mouse from the top to the bottom, I did not return to the first item to begin the drag to the "SORT " category, and as jacky said, it began wherever my mouse was as I started dragging. Repeating the process, but dragging from the top worked just fine.

Thanks to all for helpful suggestions.

Al Fulton

I'm just wondering what you need the Catalog for. If you want to copy/paste the items in a normal sorted-by-name order you can copy them directly from the file list (again: take care that the first item is the focused one!*). You can double-check the actual order of the items present on clipboard by using menu Edit | Paste Special | Edit Clipboard...

* BTW: This behavior (copy focused item first, then from there to bottom, then from top back to beginning) is mimicking Explorer behavior as I found it under Win95 and XP. Don't know about Vista's Explorer.