Changing the order of photos

[Guest]

How do I change the order of photos within a folder in My Pictures. I'm using
Windows XP Pro. Sometimes click and drag works - other times Windows changes
them back to the original.

 

[Michael J. Mahon]

How do I change the order of photos within a folder in My Pictures. I'm using
Windows XP Pro. Sometimes click and drag works - other times Windows changes
them back to the original.

In XP, the order of files when displayed is set by sorting (in a novel
but usually intuitive way) on the values of one of the attributes, like
file name, date modified, date created, file type, etc., *not* by "drag
order", which is not saved as a property of the file.

Most applications default to sorting by file name, so if you want to set
the order, you'll have to rename the files, inserting a serial number
as a prefix to the intended file name.

Use a constant length serial number, and zeroes are significant, so:

001-a file.jpg
002-some other file.jpg
003-big picture.jpg
101-another one.jpg

etc.

Note that the serial numbers need not be consecutive, but they should
be unique and constant length. Windows and moat apps will then sort
the pictures in ascending order.

-michael

New, faster SUDOKU v2.0 solver for Apple II's!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."

 

[Guest]

Thanks MIchael. That's helpful and I may resort to that. The problem is that
I'm developing a family archive of photos going back several generations and
have now over 5000 in total and subdivided into subfolders. I'm scanning from
a variety of sources so what might be 005 today might become 008 tomorrow. Do
you know of a program that works well with Windows xp that has drag and drop
capability? I appreciate your time.

 

[Michael J. Mahon]

I'm sure Yves can provide you with some tool suggestions.

I tend to use a lot of directories for hierarchical structure,
and only sequence within a directory.

-michael

 

[Guest]

Good Grief Michael - don't you ever sleep! Thanks for your help. I will await
Yves response.

 

[Yves Alarie]

I used to answer this question here but then papajohn was kind enough to
take the info and post it on his web site with some fancy graphics. So here
is the site to get the info:
http://www.papajohn.org/MM2-OrganizePictures.html

 

[Guest]

Thanks Yves - I appreciate your time.

I used to answer this question here but then papajohn was kind enough to
take the info and post it on his web site with some fancy graphics. So here
is the site to get the info:
http://www.papajohn.org/MM2-OrganizePictures.html