finderhigh sierrasort
I cannot sort by name when I simply open a finder, and select a folder. See the image below:
I know that I can do Cmd-J to bring up the menu for defining the sort and arrange by, but this seems rather complicated (as does customizing the toolbar).
So how can I easily sort the files and folders to be in alphabetical order in Finder?
Clean Up By is only available in icon view. If Arrange By is not set to None, it doesn't seem to do anything until you change Arrange By to None. If Arrange By is set to None and Sort By is set to Snap to Grid, it arranges icons so that they are aligned on a grid. If Arrange By is set to None and Sort By is set to anything else, it sorts icons and changes Sort By to None.
The Arrange By modes were added in Lion. They group items under sections like this in different view modes:
List views cannot be sorted by clicking the headings when items are arranged by some attribute.
When items are arranged by some attribute, Sort By affects the way items are sorted inside the categories in some cases, but in other cases it's disabled.
Sort By doesn't group items under sections. The Sort by mode is changed when for example clicking the list headings in list view. The Arrange By menus change to Sort By when holding option:
After pressing Command+J, be sure the box is checked under show columns for the parameter you would like to sort by. Then, in the Finder window, just clicking on the title of the column that you would like to sort by (in your case Date Created) will toggle through the different ways to sort by that parameter.
EDIT: This, unfortunately, only works on List View.
Best Answer
If you're just looking for headers that you can click on to sort your items by name, date, size, etc then you're probably wanting to use the List view instead. This allows you to sort items by clicking on the headers (e.g. clicking on the Name header will choose between an ascending or descending sort).
If you're wanting to manually sort items regardless of the view you're using, you can use the Arrange button in the Finder's Toolbar. This looks like:
By clicking on this you can arrange your items by any of the following options:
Perhaps an option that will interest you is the fact you can customise your Finder's Toolbar. To do this, within Finder go to View > Customise Toolbar...
From here you can add/remove buttons, opt for the default set, and choose whether you want to see icons only, text only, or icons and text in the Toolbar.