navigator folder sort by date created

[pmathew]

Hi, recently I've had a big clean up of my main storage hardrive getting rid of a lot of unwanted images from the last couple of years (either directly from PM or LR) and now am not able to see folders in date order.

It seems that navigator uses date modified for this and that deleting files has created a new modification dates for my folders, is that what I'm seeing?

I have done this kind of clean up before but I don't recall that it affected the folder sort by date option ..... but I might be wrong about that or perhaps I haven't done it since you introduced the navigator sort by date option (which has been really great BTW)

Is there a way to get navigator to use (folder) date created rather than modified or do I have to just go back to using a finder window if I need to see folders by date created.

I'm using Photo Mechanic Version 5.0, build 19749 (20d085a) on mac 10.12.6

Thanks

[Kirk Baker]

Is there a way to get navigator to use (folder) date created rather than modified or do I have to just go back to using a finder window if I need to see folders by date created.

No, there is no way to get the date sort to use the creation date of the folder.

-Kirk

[Graham1]

Don’t know if this will help, because you are on a Mac.

Nirsoft.net has an excellent free utility called BulkFileChanger (now ver 1.7.1). This makes it easy to change folder modified dates back to their creation date.

The problem is that this is Windows only.  I do not use a Mac, but I believe there are utilities that allow Macs to run Windows programmes, and vice versa.  I do not know whether this would allow the programme to work with a Mac, but it may be worth looking into if this is an issue for you.  The Nirsoft utilities are very good.

Graham

[Kirk Baker]

Graham,

Copying the creation time to the modification time would only work until some operation in that folder (creating a file, deleting a file, renaming a file, etc.) happened and then the modification time would change again.

-Kirk

[Graham1]

Yep, agreed, but if we only get round to sorting out our files once per lockdown, hopefully it will be some time before it is necessary to re-run the utility 

Graham

[ericbowles]

For just the reason you mention, I include the date in every folder name and every file name.  I put it in place by using a variable.  When I have multiple days on the same card, it automatically creates one folder per day. 

[pmathew]

Thanks everyone.
I decided many years ago not to use dates in my folder names as I didn't want names to be too long and for me searchable information was much more useful (who what where etc) and I could always use (mac) finder to sort by date created if I needed that reference ..... which I quite often do especially for recent work.

I will look into options for changing modification time to created time on mac .... that could be a useful work around if it was easy, quick and safe to do.

Just out of interest Kirk is it actually impossible to use Date created as a sort option for folders .... could it ever be a feature?
If it is impossible I guess that would also explain why Lightroom also doesn't offer that kind of functionality ....  LR doesnt allow any kind of sort option in the folders panel ..... I know LR isn't designed to be used in that way but I know I'm not alone in wishing it did.

cheers
peter

[Kirk Baker]

Peter,

Thanks everyone.
I decided many years ago not to use dates in my folder names as I didn't want names to be too long and for me searchable information was much more useful (who what where etc) and I could always use (mac) finder to sort by date created if I needed that reference ..... which I quite often do especially for recent work.

I will look into options for changing modification time to created time on mac .... that could be a useful work around if it was easy, quick and safe to do.

Just out of interest Kirk is it actually impossible to use Date created as a sort option for folders .... could it ever be a feature?

Most likely it could be done, yes.  But it would only ever be added to the current version of PM (which is PM6 right now).

-Kirk

[pmathew]

It would be a good enough reason for me to up-grade