Sort files by name automatically on copy

[Yochanan]

I recently did a clean install of Windows 7, and find I'm missing a feature I enjoyed in the previous install. When I would copy a file into a folder, it used to place the file in alphabetical order automatically and highlight the file. I don't know how I enabled this functionality or why it's not working if it's supposed to do it by default. It's already set to sort by name ascending. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Saint Shiv]

  Yochanan said:

I recently did a clean install of Windows 7, and find I'm missing a feature I enjoyed in the previous install. When I would copy a file into a folder, it used to place the file in alphabetical order automatically and highlight the file. I don't know how I enabled this functionality or why it's not working if it's supposed to do it by default. It's already set to sort by name ascending. Any ideas? Thanks.

Right click -> Sort by -> Name

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

  Saint Shiv said:

Right click -> Sort by -> Name

He mentioned that in his post.

  Yochanan said:

I recently did a clean install of Windows 7, and find I'm missing a feature I enjoyed in the previous install. When I would copy a file into a folder, it used to place the file in alphabetical order automatically and highlight the file. I don't know how I enabled this functionality or why it's not working if it's supposed to do it by default. It's already set to sort by name ascending. Any ideas? Thanks.

All I can suggest is press Ctrl+R or F5 to refresh the folder. On my PC, this will resort the files, and the current file will still be highlighted.

[Saint Shiv]

I think I disabled thumbnail cache to make the folders refresh faster (pretty much automatically)

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Is this into a Library folder, a drive folder, or a regular folder?

Generally items should be sorted into the existing list unless the sorting operation will be too expensive / take too long.

But I think the root of a drive is an exception... this is an inconsistency, and I'll make sure we have it logged.

[MS Bob 11]

Welcome to Windows Vista.

Auto sort = ON (Vista & later) and Auto ARRANGE = ON (new annoyance in Windows 7) by default, if yours is not working for some reason, I envy you.

[Yochanan]

  Brandon Live said:

Is this into a Library folder, a drive folder, or a regular folder?

Generally items should be sorted into the existing list unless the sorting operation will be too expensive / take too long.

But I think the root of a drive is an exception... this is an inconsistency, and I'll make sure we have it logged.

Thanks Brandon. I did some testing in various different folders. It appears that it does not sort the newly copied file(s) into a folder with a lot of files (say, 249) when Explorer has just been started. If Explorer has been open for a short time, it will sort. In other folders where there are fewer files it works fine. Also as you mentioned it does not sort in the root of a drive.