Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Sort scattered files into organized folders with ‘Order in my Folder’

Sort scattered files into organized folders with ‘Order in my Folder’:
Order in folder before and after
Do you have folders that are choc full of all sorts of accumulated downloaded files? Or perhaps you have a folder that contains a large number of files, some of which you currently use and others that belong to projects that have long since been completed, etc. If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you might be interested in ‘Order in my Folder’, a free program that can arrange scattered files instantly, and automatically filter and sort their contents in many different ways, such as by filetype, by file creation or modification date (or year/month combinations), etc.
Order in my Folder Screenshot1
To test this software, I used my download folder which contains hundreds of scattered files that I’ve always wanted to sort, but was always averse to spending the time and effort to do so. With Order in my Folder, the process took mere minutes.
Note that Order in my Folder processes files, not folders. Any subfolders in the folder that you are processing will be left untouched.

How to use: click here for a step-by-step walkthrough with screenshots
1. Browse to the folder you want (see the screenshot above)
Any subfolders in the folder you choose will be skipped over, ‘Order in my Folder’ will only process files.
2. Filter the files you want to process: this can be done through (a) a text wildcard, and (b) files older than x days.
Order in my Folder Screenshot4 - filter
3. Select the sorting method:
Order in my Folder Screenshot2
Sorting methods: you can sort by extension, by various incarnations of date, and by first character.
4. Process: finally, click the ‘order’ button. It may take a while, depending on how many files you are processing, and how large
The screenshot below shows the result for year/month sorting
Order in my Folder Screenshot3



The verdict: a very useful software that delivers what it promises. The option to filter files to process by wildcard makes a simple and straightforward program a lot more versatile than it initially appears.
The one complaint I might have is that although there seems to be an option to add ‘Order to my Folder’ to the Windows context menu, it didn’t  work for me on Windows 7 64 bit (my attempts to run the program as administrator in the hope of successfully installing the context menu strangely resulted in the program not launching at all).
Do you know of any alternate freeware programs that can do this function and do it really well? Let me know in the comments section.
Version tested: 1.3
Compatibility: WinAll
Go to the program page to download (~1.17 megs).

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