Solved How to show files in date order - not as straightforward as it sounds!

[Firefox1701]

Hi,
I wonder if anyone can enlighten me ... this seems like one of those things that's probably very simple when you know how.
I don't know if it makes a difference, but I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate.
I have quite a large assortment of audio files, each one of which relates to a different date. However, the date to which any given audio file relates will almost never be the same as the date on which the file was originally created or the date on which it was last accessed. At present, the files are just titled 'January 23 2026' etc.
This collection of files is being added to on an ongoing basis, but not, unfortunately, in chronological order; for example, there may be existing files named 'May 2010' and 'August 2010', and then some time later a new file might be added named 'June 2010'. So my question is: is it possible ( and if so, how? ) to get the files to automatically display in the date order ( as opposed to the alphabetical order, which would place January after April etc. ) of the file names - also as opposed to the date order in which they were created or the date order in which they were last accessed?
I realise that a workaround would be to label a file as, say '001 ) May 2010' and then '002 ) August 2010' etc., but of course the problem with this is that every time you insert a file in the middle of the running order, you then have to manually change all of the numbering after that.
As I say, it really seems like this should be easier than it appears ( to me ). If anyone can shed light on this, I would appreciate it. If I've posted this in the wrong section, perhaps one of the moderators would be kind enough to move it accordingly.

 

[Alejandro85]

The best way to achieve this is to name the files in a way that alphabetical order is also chronological order. This is easy to do if you name the files with the ISO standard date format (yyyy-mm-dd), for example your samples would end up being "2010-05", "2010-08", etc. Those filenames sort naturally in chronological order in any file manager.

Creation and access date (as well as any other filesystem date) are inherently unreliable and can unexpectedly change at any moment, so don't use them for this purpose.

 

[Firefox1701]

I didn't really want to change the file names, but your suggestion did give me an idea which so far does seem to have solved the problem.
If you enter the ISO date format as the title rather than part of the file name ( you don't even necessarily need to include the dashes or other separators if you don't want to ), and then have the folder display items in order of titles rather than file names, problem solved!
Thank you for the suggestion, which did ultimately solve the problem in a roundabout way!