Recently Used List Sort order: Date vs Alpha
If you (MS) were going to "improve" the tool this way you really should have adhered to "traditional" standards and when changing something this fundamental also made a user controllable option to allow people who need alpha sort to be able to turn back it on.
This is actually the first mention I've seen of this "improvement". It alone is enough to make me serious reject switching to this version.
I haven't bothered trying 2016, simply because I didn't have enough empty space on my HD for it.
Yes, I can see where for some people "last used" is useful. But in my case, in Word I currently have 40 documents pinned (I counted). They sort into my required order because I have added prefixes to force the alphabetical sort to work for me. Switching to last used order will totally disorder my orderly process making my work harder.
I am very disappointed.
I hope you will do the "right thing" and quickly (in a year or two, I am not a totally unrealisitic idealist <sigh> ) add a user controlled "option" to select alpha sort.
ron007
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80 comments
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Anonymous
commented
The sheer bloody arrogance of MS is almost Applesque! The most logical order for me (and the one used by almost every other program of any type) is to list recently opened files in order of the Date/Time they were Last Saved.
I am surprised no enterprising programmer hasn't developed a sort of add-on to provide this feature.
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Dizzy
commented
SIX years on, and still no change, except that clicking on Name, or Date modified did sort mine in Home>Open>Recent in Word but not any other 365 application. Now that is gone too. Something SO FUNDAMENTAL yet still impossible. Absolutely incredible to believe this is 2021.
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GW
commented
Agreed. It looks like these requests for alpha-numeric sort have been piling up for years. Is there a strong lobby for making the order of pinned documents as inconvenient as possible?
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Dee
commented
I miss the alpha sort as well. Spending more time searching than working now. With this feedback being 5 years old now, it doesn't look like Microsoft is listening. Recently got "upgraded" to Office 2016. Haven't seen any improvements yet.
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John
commented
The sort by date system is assinine. Why must I look for my 2016 Financial folder to locate my 2020 IRS subfolder? Whoever designed this should be sent back to elementary school.
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Anonymous
commented
I would like to sort them in an order that is best for me. That may be Alpha-Numeric, by last opened, frequency of use, or in order of priority. We use to be able to drag and drop where we wanted the pinned file. Please bring this back.
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Anonymous
commented
Aplha-numeric, please! Pretty please with sugar on top; Alpha-numeric.. Thank you.
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Kevin PASSMORE
commented
It's November 2019 - this vital improvement still hasn;t been made.
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Anonymous
commented
I prefer to manually change the order because sometimes the most important document I need pinned at the top may not start with an "A" or be the most recently opened document. Why cannot these pinned lists be as easy to modify as iTunes "play lists?"
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Anonymous
commented
Add me in for Alpha sort order on pinned workbooks. Chronological order is not optimal for me.
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Sue T
commented
Add me to the list. Alpha works for me, chronological order does not.
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Anonymous
commented
I agree that having the Pinned (NOT just "recently opened") list sort by most recent makes no sense and is a clear step backward. There are several Word and Excel documents that I access at least daily, sometimes multiple times. It used to be that one of them was always #3, so in a couple of seconds, without looking at ANYTHING, I could launch the recents area and then hit the number for the document. Now it could be 1, 3, 6 or 9, so I have to stop at that point in the process, peruse the list, and then make the selection. It adds a few seconds,which probably comes out to over an hour a year. And it's frustrating because it used to work BETTER! I might not notice if it had never worked more efficiently, but it did, and now you broke it for no reason!
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Aaron Day
commented
I use keystrokes and name my pinned files in a way that I can quickly access them by number in order. Trying to find each one based on the last time I used it so ridiculously inefficient. The whole purpose of pinning is to find them quickly, but now I have to scan through a list of pinned files to find the one I want rather than just knowing exactly where they are in order. I'd switch back to the old version of office if I could. Upgrades should make my work more, not less, efficient.
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Elizabeth Scholes
commented
I have 43 pinned documents in Excel and 27 in Word. I need these to be in alphabetical order to ensure efficiencies. I now have to spend time I don't have to spare searching my pinned documents. This has made pinning the documents a worthless exercise.
PLEASE GIVE THE OPTION TO SORT OUR PINNED DOCUMENTS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER!!!
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Marion
commented
Alphabetical and an option to sort the way I want them. I used to be able to move them so that those files I used most were at the top, now I have to waste time going through the list to find the file I want.
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Anonymous
commented
Don't just review the suggestion. Do please change back pinned items to be sorted alphabetically. Or give users the option. I work with multiple files and typically if I open one and need another 3 seconds later it is most definitely not the file I opened last.
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Don Beusee
commented
The title ("Recently Used List Sort order: Date vs Alpha") should be changed to "Pinned List Sort order in open dialog: Date vs Alpha".
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Anonymous
commented
Office 2016 SUCKS. It is NOT USER FRIENDLY at all. It takes more time for me to get things done than in the 2010 version. I need to be able to ALPHA the Pinned List. It takes too long to find what I need to get done now. You were not thinking with that Ribbon. It sucks as well. You should be able to put Icons of what you use the most on a tool bar. Now it takes 3 to 5 steps more to complete something I used to do in one click of a button. I am going back to WordPerfect, which is so much easier to use and more user friendly.
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Larken *
commented
Please give users the ability to sort recent documents alphabetically. Having the last date used appear would be helpful as well. But definitely alphabetically. Currently I waste a lot of time trying to find the recent document I'm looking for. Thank you.
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Pudin Foot
commented
No having files listed in Alphabetical order sucks. Why does Microsoft think they needed to change this?