Alphabetizing in iTunes

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chillesq2013 Author

Level 1

5 points

Alphabetizing in iTunes

I am very frustrated with the fact that for some reason Apple is able to properly alphabetize in some areas of iTunes and not in other areas. Movie titles or television titles that begin with the letter A as in “A Walk in the Clouds” or the word The as in “The Santa Clause” are supposed to be alphabetized under the next word (here that would be “Walk” or “Santa”) otherwise you would have more than half of your movies or television shows alphabetized under the letter “A” or the word “The”

This is an obvious alphabetizing rule and Apple needs to properly follow it at all times.

iPad, iOS 9

Posted on Jan 25, 2021 7:15 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

274,576 points

Jan 25, 2021 8:39 PM in response to chillesq2013

I've just posted this for another thread, but the same override behaviour exists for movie titles.

Sorting is based on metadata. If you're not getting the sort order you expect then it is likely you cannot see the details that are causing the issue. iTunes can't guess what you really want. You need to fix the metadata to get the results you're looking for. If you right-click on the column headings you will get a list of them. If Sort Name is already turned on it is probably off to the right somewhere. Turn it off and then on again to bring it close to Name, or drag it to the position you want.

Sorting by Name actually sorts by Sort Name. In the example above I've added sort values to force one track to the start and another to the end. Auto sort values are created for any value that begins with an article (a/an/the) and I've explicitly set the sort value of The Spy to force it to be listed under T rather than S. Where the sort value is empty the primary value is used as the sort value.

tt2

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Alphabetizing in iTunes

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