Copy file without sorting its contents

[justkay]

I have files under my picture folder which contain photographs I have
scanned in. They are grouped by the year they were taken. In each year file
I manually rearranged them in chronological order. However, when I try
copying a year file to a flash drive for back-up, the pictures in the target
file get sorted alphabetically. Is there a simple way I can keep the
pictures in the order I want?

 

[Tim Slattery]

I have files under my picture folder which contain photographs I have
scanned in. They are grouped by the year they were taken. In each year file
I manually rearranged them in chronological order. However, when I try
copying a year file to a flash drive for back-up, the pictures in the target
file get sorted alphabetically. Is there a simple way I can keep the
pictures in the order I want?

I don't know what you did to order them.

When an NTFS directory is traversed to retrieve all files, it will
find them alphabetically, you aren't going to change that. FAT32
directories (I assume your flash drive is FAT32) are sequential, the
files will be found in the same order they were written.

 

[Gord Dibben]

You mean you want to copy a folder without the files becoming out of order?

You can go to this site and follow directions for renaming.
http://www.papajohn.org/MM2-OrganizePictures.html


Gord

 

[Jim]

I have files under my picture folder which contain photographs I have
scanned in. They are grouped by the year they were taken. In each year
file
I manually rearranged them in chronological order. However, when I try
copying a year file to a flash drive for back-up, the pictures in the
target
file get sorted alphabetically. Is there a simple way I can keep the
pictures in the order I want?

Certainly. Give them a name that will sort the images in the manner that
you desire.
XP displays files in alphabetical order. Rearranging them does not change
the order.
If you want them sorted in chronological order, then rename them such that
an alphabetic sort will put the files in chronological order.
I save may files to a folders whose names are <alphabetic month><year>,.
Inside the folder, the files have names as mm-dd-yyyy-sequence number.
Jim

 

[justkay]

Yes, that would work. I was hoping there was some way to turn off the
automatic sorting.

 

[justkay]

That website is very thorough. No doubt I can keep my pictures in the order
I want by putting a string in front of the title to get the results I want.
This later will make more work for me becasue I will be scanning in slides
next (covering some of the same years) & then will hae to redo the
alphabetizing preface.

 

[justkay]

Yes, that would work. I guess I was hoping there was a way to turn off the
sort for those folders.

There is something else going on that I do not understand. See my reply to
Tim Slattery.

 

[justkay]

I don't know what happened to my reply to you, so I will try again.

Yes, the flash drive is FAT32 & my hard drive is NTFS.
However, what I am getting is inconsistency. After I rearrange a folder of
pictures, copy it to the flash drive, close it & come back later & open it,
this is what I find.
Sometimes the contents of the folder have been rearranged in alphabetical
order & sometimes they have stayed in the same rearranged order (not
alphabetical) that I put them. I do not understand this.
When I manually rearranged the photos in a folder, I used the drag & drop
method.