If you click the Name field at the top of a column in Windows Explorer that will toggle the sort order. It will sort alphabetically either ascending or descending order. This works for the other columns you choose to display as well.

Take a look at this...

[support.microsoft.com...]

Kaled.

Thank you kaled - That was exactly what I was looking for!

kaled - Great reference. Thanks.

To take this question a bit further, does anyone know what the sort order rules are for Macs?

I occasionally encounter cross-platform issues when working with clients and suppliers who work on Macs, and it would be nice to know of potential sort order inconsistencies in advance. This seems a good place to ask.

A PS to comments above...

I just noticed that the MS KB article suggests that XP and Vista should behave the same. The OP's question (and example) suggests that they don't.

The sort order that is used by Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 for files and folders whose names contain numerals differs from the sort order that is used by Windows 2000....

...By default, the newer sort order considers strings in file and folder names as numeric content, not text. Numerals in folder and file names are sorted according to their numeric value.

In Mac OSX, I get the following:

Alphabetically:
52bbb
8674ccc
123456aaa

Reverse Alpha:
123456aaa
8674ccc
52bbb

When I add a letter to the beginning, I get:

Alphabetically:
a52bbb
b123456aaa
c8674ccc

Reverse Alpha:
c8674ccc
b123456aaa
a52bbb

Hi Robert Charlton - that was my error when I typed the original question. I was using Win2000 at work before upgrading to Vista, but at home I am on XP. Just force of habit to reference XP I guess.

Thanks... So, what we have is that... when the filename begines with a number... XP, Vista, and Mac OSX are consistent with each other, and that they sort as MS describes in KB-319827, which kaled linked to above....

By default, the newer sort order considers strings in file and folder names as numeric content, not text. Numerals in folder and file names are sorted according to their numeric value.

None of the examples quite covered all possibilities, including what happens in various apps, so I've run the following tests on XP, with some text .txt files. XP (which is to say, Windows Explorer) maintains the numerical values of numbers even when preceded by an alphabetical character). Some second party apps on XP change this order, treating numbers as alphabetical characers....

IN WINDOWS EXPLORER ON XP

85aa.txt
789aa.txt
12345aa.txt
abc.txt
cdf.txt
d85aa.txt
ghi.txt
x85aa.txt
x789aa.txt
x12345aa.txt

IN SECOND-PARTY FILE MANAGER (TOTAL COMMANDER) ON XP

12345aa.txt
789aa.txt
85aa.txt
abc.txt
cdf.txt
d85aa.txt
ghi.txt
x12345aa.txt
x789aa.txt
x85aa.txt

ALPHANUMERIC SORT IN TEXT EDITOR (NOTETAB PRO)

12345aa.txt
789aa.txt
85aa.txt
abc.txt
cdf.txt
d85aa.txt
ghi.txt
x12345aa.txt
x789aa.txt
x85aa.txt

On my Mac, when I label them all starting with the same letter, but with different numerals, I get this:

Alphabetically:

a52bbb
a8674ccc
a123456aaa
b52bbb
b8674ccc
b123456aaa

and reversed:

b123456aaa
b8674ccc
b52bbb
a123456aaa
a8674ccc
a52bbb

Pretty interesting, I've never thought about this before...

I haven't studied this, but I think you will find that the filenames are effectively broken up into numeric strings and non-numeric strings. The numeric strings are then padded with leading zeros (to ten decimal places probably) and then recombined with the non-numeric strings. From that point onwards, normal string sorting rules will be applied.

It might be interesting to try using numerics with decimal points since no padding should be applied to the fractional part.

Kaled.