ADVANCED SORTING QUESTION

[NewDawn]

hello! here's my problem. lets say i have several folders containing many subfolders with files. when i hit ctrl+b for all the initial folders and then copy all the files thus obtained to another place(or drive) i would like for all the files to remain in the same order as they were in their specific folders in the begining. even more, can this be achieved when there are files with the same name in different initial folders and i use auto-rename target files when copying them?( so i want the renamed files to have the same order location that they had before being copied and renamed)

can this be done and if so how? thanks in advance!

[MVV]

Don't understand where you've asked about sorting...
If you need to copy files and keep directory structure, you can try my CopyTree plugin.

[NewDawn]

i was thinking that it can be done with some kind of sorting after the files have been copied. cant it be done with some built-in function of TC?

dont get me wrong, thanks very much for the reply!

[MVV]

TC copies files from branch view into single folder only. That's why such plugins exist.

[NewDawn]

i must be doing something wrong. im getting "unable to copy file with another base path". tis true that i made some test folders in which i copied files from another location, but i dont think this should get in the way, would be a great disadvantage. what to do now? also, could you tell me what options should i check in the left side of pack files dialog and also how to configure the plugin in the right side of it?[/img]

im sorry for the trouble, its a bit difficult to express what i need, as im not a native english speaker. to make it simple, lets say i have 3 folders: folder A, X and 6. A has files: mom, dad, sister. X has: summer, winter, spring. 6 has guitar, paintbrush, charcoal. what i really need is to quickly(as quickly as branch view or close) get all these files out of their parent folders in a single folder and listed like this:

mom
dad
sister
summer
winter
spring
guitar
paintbrush
charcoal

and not sorted by name, date or extension or any other method. i hope i fixed some of the translation errors that i might have made before.

[petermad]

2NewDawn
What you want, can only be done if you copy to a FAT partitioned drive, not to a NFTS partition, since the operating system automatically sorts files on an NTFS partition by name.

So you must either make a FAT partition on you harddrive to copy to, or copy to a media that is already FAT partitioned, such as most USB memory sticks (dongles) are.

Then set TC's sort order in the target panel to Unsorted ( Ctrl+F7 ) and copy from Branch view. Files on the (FAT partitioned target) will now be shown in the order they were copied.

Notice that if you later delete a file on the target side and copy a new file to it, then that new file will most likely take the place of the deleted file. Also note that using long filenames (more than 8 characters) can make the result unpredictable when the copying is done over several sessions (best to copy everything just once into an empty folder to be sure that the copy order is respected).

You can also copy your files into a zip-file (or other archive type), they also show the files in the order they were added to the archive when viewed in Unsorted mode in TC.

[NewDawn]

cant i make a setting to cancel the automatic sorting?

and if i understand correctly, it only matters that the source drive(which is indeed a usb stick, a cd or dvd) is FAT partitioned. then i go to branch view in the source drive and copy all files to the unsorted target drive. and i get what i want, right? to fix the long name problem, is it enough that i use the multi-rename tool in the source drive in branch view to give files counter names?

[petermad]

cant i make a setting to cancel the automatic sorting?

No, you cannot disable the automatic name sorting of NTFS partioned drives, so on NFTS drives the order you see when choosing Unsorted view in TC, is the name order that NTFS uses, which by the way might not be quite the same as TC's name sorting (or Explorer's for that matter)

TC can sort by name in 4 different ways see: Configuration -> Options... -> Display -> File display -> Sort method:

to fix the long name problem, is it enough that i use the multi-rename tool in the source drive in branch view to give files counter names?

Usually even long names are stored in the order they were copied, if you copy to an empty directory, and only do one copy process. So you might not have to rename.

[NewDawn]

thanks a lot!