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Dropbox keeps sorting my files based on when I last accessed them, instead of alphabetically.

Question or Issue

In the past year or so Dropbox changed the way my files are listed so instead of opening and searching for files in alphabetical order as I set them up, they are now listed under the month last opened. I did not request this and cannot search this way. How can I stop this?

I should add that sometimes my files do appear in normal alphabetical order and other times they appear in this crazy month order. I can’t figure out why it goes one way or the other.

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Disillusion

Hi Nancy,

I answered but it bounced back—my email program seemed to have malfunctioned. However, I have solved the problem. Because I couldn’t get through to you, I made a general google inquiry rather than Dropbox specific and it turns out the problem is with Apple—it decided to mess with all folder systems in its latest OS, not just Dropbox. I followed the fix and it worked! For anyone else having this problem, go to “View” on Finder and make sure that “Use Groups” isn’t clicked.

Disillusion

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Nancy

Hey @Disillusion, thanks for posting on our forum today.

To have a better grasp of your issue, can you send me a full screenshot of what you see on your end, so that I can check which Dropbox platform this is happening on?

Is this something you experience on multiple Dropbox platforms, or only one of them?

Let me know, and we’ll take it from there.

Disillusion

Hi Nancy,

Disillusion

Rich

Disillusion wrote:
I answered but it bounced back—my email program seemed to have malfunctioned.

You can't reply to the forums by email. The email you receive is just a notification of the reply, along with the content. You need to come back to your post to add a reply.

Nancy

Thanks for sharing your solution with us, @Disillusion! Glad you could figure it out.

Theresa

Hi there @Disillusion , and welcome to the Dropbox Community 👋

Thanks so much for coming back and sharing your update. Your reply will certainly help others in the future.

And yes, as @Rich mentioned, replying to the email notification won’t post your response here in the forum. The email simply alerts you that there’s an update. We’ll definitely take your feedback about this on board for future improvements.

By the way, I’m Theresa 👩‍💻, one of the Community Managers here at Dropbox HQ. Since you’ve been working with file sorting in Dropbox, I’d love to know… what’s your fave Dropbox feature? Whether it’s simple or advanced, I’m always curious what people enjoy most.

Looking forward to hearing more,

T 😺 (Dropbox Community Manager)

Disillusion

Hi Theresa,

Well, I certainly no longer like the file listing system. My solution worked for awhile and then reverted to organizing and listing files by the last time I acted on a file. This is maddening. I don’t know whether it is Dropbox or Apple but I would think that they would work together. Instead, it seems as though programmers think they know better than users do what features we want. Why don’t you check before changing features? Yes, of course, fix bugs. That’s your job. But first ask about features otherwise and at least let us opt out.

I am quite sure that I speak for legions of people who want to use devices and apps without mastering programming. That’s why we pay for them.

Dissolution