Windows 10: Has MS sorted out being able to lock desktop items where I want them sorted and placed?...

Having to reorganise my desktop icons on each hotdesk I go to and is infuriating why can't I just lock them where I put them and they stay in place. It even messes them up on my laptop. Surely there is a simple fix. My Mac I had at a previous job never did this!

:)

 

Can't we sort Quick Access items?

In File Explorer, I want the items appearing under Quick Access to be sorted alphabetically. However, "sort" is grayed out.

Further down the list in the sidebar, items under "This PC" can be sorted. Why in the world is this not possible for Quick Access?

 

Cannot permanantly sort items in Windows Explorer

You're not alone; I'm seeing similar behavior. Music folders don't want to remember their sort preference if the sort property is "Contributing Artist".

I'm still probing & testing, but here's what I see so far:

• Other metadata sorts are remembered: Album, Album Artist, #, Title were the fields I tested. Would like to know if others see similar results.
• When you close a folder sorted on 'Contributing Artist' & then re-open, the background context menu reveals that sort has reverted to an "unspecifed" state (no property name bulleted).

If I sort on "Contributing Artists", close & re-open the folder, the sort is forgotten:




But other tags are remembered:





Will poke around more tomorrow. I'm truly curious as to the "why". If you're just annoyed & want something to work, I'd suggest using the "Album Artist" field, since that seems OK with being specifed as the sort field.

 

Can't we sort Quick Access items?

Hi Cathy,

Items in the Quick access view can't be sorted as you like. It's a special folder designed that way. The "recent files" section, files that are most recently accessed are shown at the top. For Frequent folders listing, its sorted as:

Pinned Special folders

Pinned folders

Recent folders

Two things that can be changed:

1. Mix up Frequent folders and Recent files listing, instead of them being shown in separate groups.

2. Sort "frequent folders" items by name regardless of type (whether it's a special folder, pinned normal folder or a recent folder.)

Unfortunately, both of this involve editing the registry.

For custom sort, AFAIK, that can't be done for Quick access.. and even if it were possible it might involve editing the registry and changing the shell folder bitmask values.

Two other workarounds would be:

1. Pin "Recent folders" in Quick Access.

2. Pin "Recent folders" as a separate namespace item, appearing below Quick access section.

REF: How to Pin Recent folders or Recent Places to the Navigation Pane in Windows 10 File Explorer

Benefit: Items in this view can be custom sorted.