Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

First time visitor with a small question. I'm writing a book using the Open Office Writer. It's been going great, and I've had no issues thus far. But I've ran into a small nitpick, and was looking for help.

I have all the chapters in my book saved to my PC (and other places) arranged by number. So chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3 and so on.

For some reason I can't figure out, Chapter 35 decided to save itself out of order from the rest of the other chapters. So, right now, it looks like this in my file explorer:

...
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 35
...

Chapter 35 is in the bottom of the folder, and I don't know why. It opens correctly. Nothing is different about the file name, or its extension (.doc). I can't see why its doing this, and it bothers me. If anyone has advice for this minor gripe, I'd appreciate it.

The sort order of files in File Explorer is not necessarily by name. They can be ordered by size or Modified Date or probably any other property that is displayed. If you click on the header of the file name column, you should get them sorted by name. If they appear in the reverse order of what you want, click the header again.

Yes, I'm aware.

The file remains in the incorrect position, no matter how I try to arrange it in file explorer.

Without actually renaming, try the renaming option in the file manager and see if there are any unexpected characters in the filenames. If you are familiar with the command line, you could try a directory listing there.

I'll move this topic to General Discussion as it is not directly related to Writer.

JCvgluvr88 wrote:Yes, I'm aware.

The file remains in the incorrect position, no matter how I try to arrange it in file explorer.

Maybe File Explorer is confused. Did you try restarting the computer?

Do you have an extra space in the name? A non-printing character in the name? An extra dot?

Un-tick Hide qualifiers for known file types in Settings. What qualifiers are you using? Is one misspelt?

1. Right-click Chapter 35.odt and rename it to fred.odt
2. Now rename fred.odt to Chapter 35.odt.

Does that fix it? If not upload a screen shot of what you see when you view the folder of files.

Thank you for the detailed response John_Ha! I'm happy to report you helped me resolve this little error! I renamed the document to "fred" like you suggested. Then renamed it again back to "chapter 35." Now everything is in the right place!

I never saw an extra space, or any oddities the first time around. So I'm not exactly sure what changed. But everything looks good now, so I won't question it. Thank you, and thanks to everyone else!

When saving numbered files I find it best to insert a zero - Chapter_01 instead of Chapter 1, and replace spaces with underscores.