Solved Sort direction in multicolumn file select menus

One annoyance that I've found in Vista is that unlike all previous Windows versions that I've used, when I get a file selection menu, such as for opening a file within an application or 'save as...', if the list is a multicolumn one, as is usually the case, the ordering of the files is NOT vertical as it always had been before, but is horizontal.

Although I can see a logic in this, the fact is that when I'm faced with columns, my eye naturally reads down each column, and therefore I need the vertical sort arrangement as had always previously been the case.

Please, therefore, does anyone know of a fix for this, so that I can restore vertical sort arrangement in those lists? Many thanks.

Kind regards,

Hello Philip,

This tutorial may be able to help you out. It will show you how to change the sort order to what you like. Usually you can just keep clicking on the column name that you want it sorted by until you see a sort order you like.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/108665-column-customize.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thank you, Shawn. However, in fact none of that addresses at all the issue I've raised. It is not the sort order at all that is the problem, but the direction in which the sort order is displayed - horizontal instead of the intuitive vertical. I've done quite a bit of Google searching on this and so far have found no references to it at all.

Do you have Details seleted from the Views toolbar button drop down menu?

If this is not it either, could you post a screenshot of this to be sure of what you mean? I'm not sure I have ever seen it horizontal before.

Thank you,
Shawn

No, for those file selection lists (open programs, save as, etc) I'd always accepted the default, which was List view, so getting more entries into a small window.

However, I just went and clicked on View for one of these lists and something funny happened. I got a list view again, BUT it was ordered vertically, so that you read down to the bottom of the window and then start from top to bottom on the next column. That's how I wanted it. When I repeatedly clicked the View button to cycle through the various views, no horizontally ordered list view was presented again - only the vertically ordered one.

That's great, because all I have to do is make that view global (I've already read the bit about how to do that), and almost certainly this issue will be solved. Please take it that this is now solved unless I post again that there is still a problem. Weird, though, that the default (and unwanted) ordering direction completely disappears when one uses View to cycle through the views!

Thank you again, Shawn.

Your welcome Philp. I find that the whole folder view settings with Vista tend to be a bit quirky.

This is not the same issue as the sort order, it's just about how they are arranged in rows and columns.

It is consistent.
The first time you were looking at Small Icons view which arranges them across the top row, then the next row, etc. Then you changed to List view which arranges them down the first column, then down the second column.

They look very similar so you thought you were in List view when you were in Small Icons view.