Sort folders/tags by numbers of items inside?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hello all,

Is there a way that I can sort folders or tags by the number of items contained in them? I am trying to determine which tags/folders have the greatest number of items grouped inside them.

Thank you,

Anne-Marie

2

Data > Sort > By Size

Also, set the ā€œAscendingā€ or ā€œDescendingā€ option in that submenu.

1 Like
3

Thanks, but I believe this sorts by the size (KB, MB, etc) of the documents inside, not the number of items inside each folder. Is there a way to reprogram what I mean by ā€˜size?ā€™

Anne-Marie

4

True, if youā€™re sorting inside a group (say, in 3-pane view), but if you click in the group sidebar in 3-pane view, or select any group name (say, the ā€œTagsā€ parent group), then it sorts all the groups in the database by number of documents, it sorts subgroups within the parent, etc.

At least, over here thatā€™s what happens.

5

Hmm, maybe I need a DPTO for Dummies version of what you are saying, because Iā€™m still getting groups that are vaguely in order, but not in truly numerical order (and itā€™s not because of embedded groups/tags, Iā€™ve just checked that.) Can you walk me through what I should click on in order to do this? Apologies for my ineptitude, and thanksā€¦

6

Iā€™m also looking for a way to sort tags by number of items (rather than file size). Just wondering, if some solution appeared since the original post in 2012

7

You can sort a group, including the Tags group by Size. However, this depends on where youā€™re viewing the group. A pane has only one sort method. For example, the directory pane (where your groups are listed) can only be sorted by one criterion. If youā€™re viewing this pane in Three Pane View as Unsorted, you cannot open the Tags group and sort it by Size.
However, you can open the Tags group in itā€™s own window and apply its own sort method there.

8

I was looking for an answer to this just now and Iā€™m afraid the above instructions are still unclear, at least for me!

Sorting by size seems to sort by the memory size of the tag, not the number of items. Thus, in my tags list sorted by size, the first tag has 105 items but the second tag has 806, by virtue of the fact that the first tag contains a couple of >100mb files. I canā€™t seem to find a view that lets me sort tags by only the number of items contained within.

To be clear, filesize sort is a mediocre proxy for this. What Iā€™m looking for is to delete all tags with less than a certain number of items in them, but thatā€™s a hard call to make with 2121 tags and an imprecise sorting method.

Does that make sense?

9

Currently, there isnā€™t a sort method for the number of children in a group.