04-18-2020, 09:14 AM (This post was last modified: 04-18-2020, 10:05 AM by gable.)
Hello,
I recently bought Mobile Sheets Pro and I think it's great. There is just one problem, though. Either, it doesn't seem like it sorts numbers in the song titles properly, or I can't figure out what option to turn on to make it do so. This is a problem because I want the songs to appear in order in the list. Here is a picture so you can see what I mean is the problem:
As you can see, it sort of sorts it according to numbers, but not properly. How do I make it sort the titles correctly? Thanks!
Yes that did it! Didn't realize there were more options there, and had trouble figuring out what I should search for in the manual to find what I needed. I was looking around in settings haha. And it seems the app remembers what I chose last time when I open it again, awesome! Thank you
Can someone please tell me how to get my library of setlists sorted by year, then month, then day(s)? This is how I successfully label and sort my files in Windows 10, but in MobileSheets (iPad) the decimals mix up everything:
Can you use slashes or dashes instead of periods for the dates? Or even a space. I think that would probably resolve the sorting issue. Otherwise alphabetic sorting may actually work better than numeric if you make sure to always use the same number of characters, i.e. 2024.01.09 instead of just 2024.1.9. I can try to look into why that's breaking the numeric sorting algorithm though, but I would have thought the same problem would exist on Windows as it uses the same underlying code (just written in a different programming language).
12-22-2024, 06:17 AM (This post was last modified: 12-22-2024, 06:17 AM by Zubersoft.)
The issue is due to the fact that MobileSheets strips punctuation while sorting, so the numbers become much larger numbers, i.e. 20231217 compared to 20241220, so it's sorting based on those numbers. If you placed a space between them, that would work without issue. Or if you make sure to always use two digits for the day and month as I suggested above (2024.01.09) that would also ensure that the numbers are always processed correctly. The other benefit of doing that is that the width of the dates will always be consistent, potentially making it more visually pleasing.
For sorting songs specifying "Sort Title" entries for your songs could achieve whatever you want. "Sort Title" overwrites existing alfabetical sorting rules for titles in lists. You might need to make it visible on the "Fields" tab of the song editor by activating it in the three dots menu under "Configure Fields". "Sort Title" is not shown in lists unless you configure it via Settings - Library Settings - Song Title Formatting"
The song from the screenshot is sorted in lists under A whereas it is displayed as "(Der) Aberglaub'n"
Pleasure posting with you again! I'm enjoying MobileSheets and how it's made my practicing life easier, esp. with the Linux Flatpak Companion app.
Just confirming how MS works. With iOS 3.9.17 and Companion app 4.15, the sort algorithm strips punctuation (e.g., period, comma) before sorting, which for example would return these lists:
Alpha Sort
Unit 1.10
Unit 1.6
Unit 1.7
Numerical (natural) sort
Unit 1.10
Unit 1.6
Unit 1.7
Replacing a period with a space returns these sort results:
Alpha Sort
Unit 1 10
Unit 1 6
Unit 1 7
Numerical (natural) sort
Unit 1 6
Unit 1 7
Unit 1 10
I confirmed by replacing a space with a dash or a semicolon, and got the same results. I'm assuming that only decimal separators are stripped, not all other punctuation or symbols. Got a bit of editing ahead of me now but glad the answer was here in the forums.
08-17-2025, 07:47 AM (This post was last modified: 08-17-2025, 07:49 AM by Zubersoft.)
Everything you've listed seems correct. Please note that I only parse out full numbers though (not floating point numbers with a decimal, i.e. 4.35). So having a period will cause some undesired behavior with the numeric sorting. I believe all punctuation including periods should be stripped though, so I'm a little surprised by the result you got with 1.10 being before 1.6. I'll have to run some tests with that to understand what is happening there.
This is definitely an edge case. Only noticed it with documents sequentially numbered as in the example. Naturally if there are five ways to enumerate a document, some joker will come up with a sixth way. No need to put aside other work in favor of this. As the kids say, "Ain't no thang."
![[Image: HKr4IcV.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/HKr4IcV.jpg)
