APE 15 - Why won't my photos import in order of date taken?

[jtelzrow]

Program: APE 15

OS: Windows 10 Home

Problem: Photos and videos imported to APE 15 appear out of order, requiring manual fix

Steps to reproduce:

- Open folder in Windows containing images and videos

- Sort by "Date Taken" to arrange images and videos in desired order

- Drag to APE 15 (or Import, result is the same)

- View images and videos in APE 15, order of images and video has been changed from that viewed in Windows folder

As noted using the Import tool gets the same results. Also tried Organizer (see below) with no success.

Details:

APE 15 seems to import/sort by two variables--filename and file size (these are the two options in the Project Assets/Sort By flyouts). Because my images and videos come from four sources (my phone, wife's phone, family camera, GoPro camera) the filenames are mixed. Windows has no problem displaying the images/videos by "Date Taken" which sorts them as desired. When I sort my Windows folder by filename I get the same arrangement of files displayed by APE, ergo I assume that when importing APE has "helpfully" rearranged my photos by filename.

Understanding that APE 15 is limited to sorting by filename and size, I batch renamed my photos (e.g. January (1), January (2), etc.). This also chokes APE 15 because once it reaches January (10) it sorts photos as follows (January (1), January (10), etc.). Very computer, but also something Windows seems to be able to overcome… Grrr.

I then tried the Organizer tool, where the ability to sort by "Newest" became available. Unfortunately this tool is pulling it's "Newest" data not from "Date Taken" but from some other field (a photo taken in January is somehow labeled as coming into existence in July... Perhaps the day I imported from the card to the PC, I don't know).

This feels like a problem software should be able to overcome, but I fear I am in a gutter between Windows and Adobe. Is it true?

[Bill Sprague]

I agree that there should be more sort choices.  There is not. 

Can you try your batch renaming scheme starting with "001" instead of "1"?  Ten would become "010" instead of "10". 

[jtelzrow]

I don't know how to make Windows do that. A workaround I went with was to name the first 9 files "A" (windows changes them to A (1), A (2), etc.), the second 9 "B", etc. So long as you don't have more than 234 files in your folder, it works.

One hiccup was that a mix of file types resulted in naming irregularities. For example, a .mov file in a batch of 9 results in A.jpg (1), A.mov (1), A.jpg (2), etc. I had to manually fix those but they were few & it wasn't too hard.

Super kludgy, but it is working. Adobe, this should not be necessary! 😃