[Lester]

One of my collections contains church hymns which, while they all have titles, often get referred to by their numbers. I see (attached screenshot) that I can sort a collection numerically. The only numerical field I can find is the song ID but sorting numerically does not seem to sort using the song ID field.

I am not sure whether I should be looking for which field the numerical sort uses or whether I should be looking for an alternative way to sort the one collection numerically.

If there is no workable method I realise I can manually sort the hymn collection.

Help or ideas appreciated.

   

[Skip]

Try one of the two fields called 'custom or .custom 2'. They are alphanumeric and searchable. It may be best if you keep one for a specific collection an save the other for generic use.

[Zubersoft]

Definitely don't use the song ID field, as that's not just a normal piece of metadata (it overrides the song matching when using sharing features or library synchronization). Using the custom field as recommended by Skip is the best option, but you will have to go to Settings->Library Settings->Song Title Formatting and place the custom field before the title, and then use the Sort: Numerically option for the best result.

Mike

[Lester]

Thank you, Skip. Entering a few examples led me to discover that sorting numerically does not sort on either of the custom fields.

Your helpful suggestion led me to notice the Sort Title field.
Good news: sorting numerically is affected by this field.
Bad news: the Sort Title field overrides the Title field, so an A-Z sort also uses the Sort Title so I get both numerical and A-Z sort in numerical order because the Sort Title seems to override sorting by the normal Title.

I realise I want it both ways and so far I cannot find a way to have an alphabetical list of hymn titles and also a numerical sort by hymn number. I need to look further.

[Lester]

Mike, thank you for your suggestion. I have done that but I get the same results as I mentioned above (before I read your post and did what you said). I am learning what effect these fields have but I don't seem to be able to have an alphabetical sort of the Title field in one collection and a numerical sort of the same songs in another collection.

Don't worry, it is only one collection with, so far, 144 songs, so I can sort that collection manually. No worries.

[Geoff Bacon]

You could try using the filters e.g.

Add the song number ( 3 digits assumed) to the end of the song Title (either physically or by using Song Title Formatting) e.g. Song Name - 003
Display the filter
Use the letter keys to move around as required
or type the song number into the filter (all three digits e.g. 003) to find by Song Number

I have a feeling that you don't even need to display the song number for the filter to work (as long as the number is in one of the metafields). The problem then is that you don't obviously know what the number is by just looking at the song title.

Another possibility is that you annotate each song with the number; you can then display the song and announce the number to the congregation.

Geoff

[itsme]

@Lester: "sort numerically" means sort by title in numerical order. So, to use "sort numerically" you need to take care that the title contains some kind of number. You could enter the hymn number into custom or custom 2. To switch between sort by title or by hymn number you have to change "Song Title Formatting" as proposed by Mike. There's an alternative: the songs tab has the options to sort directly by custom or custom 2. In case you want to apply that to one out of severyl numbered books you need to apply an additional filter to the songs, e.g. by collection, album or by a part of the file path.

@Mike: I came across a similar task. In my library I have a book of accordion lessons. This is the only exception where I want to sort not by song title but by number. I added the number to custom2 via CSV import. Using the workaround that I proposed above I can do what I need, but it's pretty inconvenient. In my database I use albums for the book title. I added all songs of that book additionally to a collection to simplify filtering for that book on the songs tab. This doesn't add addtional information and could be avoided if albums had a selection dropdown like collections in the filters. And it would be even more convenient if the collections and the albums tab had similar sorting options like the songs tab, allowing sorting by custom and custom2. (And, additionally by SongID. With some side effects and the need to keep attention and know what I'm doing as discussed in https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...12844.html)