Windows 10 – How to Always Sort by Date Modified in Windows Explorer

sortingwindowswindows 10windows-explorer

How to force Windows to sort always by date modified and always ascending?

The situation is that often

1) Modified field is Off (not listed in Sort By menu by default)

2) Once opened More menu modified field is sometimes named Modified and some times Date modified

3) Once selected, it switched to Descending.

So, in most circumstances I need more than 10 click to do this sorting.

How to make zero?

Best Answer

Instructions

  1. Press enter image description here+ E to open File Explorer, and then click onto the root of the "C" drive

    enter image description here

  2. Press Ctrl + Shift + 6 to change the root "C" drive folder view to Details view which will add the Date modified column

  3. If the Date modified doesn't show here for some reason, then simply right click on one of the other existing columns and then select the Date modified option there to show the column.

    enter image description here

  4. Now you will want to click on the Date modified column from the root of the "C" drive still to sort the order ascending or descending for how you want all folder views to show.

  5. Now press Alt + V,Y,O to bring up the Folder Options window and then go to the View tab from there. Select the Apply to Folders option, and then select the Yes option on the pop up window that asks if you want to apply this view to all folders.

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    An Important Gotcha: It seems that each disk partition on the machine which has a folder where video files or picture files exist (i.e. MP4, JPG, etc.), you have to manually do steps #2 - #5 on one of these folders on each disk partition before these folder view settings become effective with other folders on the same disk partitions with similar files types. It seems Windows 10 automatically recognizes folders with video and/or picture files, and it optimizes the view for these file types otherwise. Once you complete this on one of these folders containing such files on each disk partition, the view settings seem to stick and become effective for others.

Now check various folders and you should notice the files and folders are sorted in the order by the fields and in the view as you set per the above instructions.

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