Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

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Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:54:41 GMT

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re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

Tony H — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:32:59 GMT

Hi Jon,

The official name and explanation for this sort order is the wonderful ASCII codes. Basically the ASCII code go like this:

! = 033 (ASCII) = 21 (HEX)

" = 034 (ASCII) = 22 (HEX)

! is the first printable or non-control character, all the way to 126 or 7F for printable characters. Not sure why the hyphen behaves as it does, so the sort order (if sorting by ASCII) should sort ZFolder before afolder as it's higher in the pecking order (I've not tested if this is the case or not).

You can find all of the codes in all of their glorious 8 bitness somewhere like this: http://www.asciicodes.us/

Cheers

re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

jonathanh — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:32:49 GMT

Yes, it's got some ASCII ordering in there, but there's a lot that's not the same:

1. The four symbol ranges in ASCII have been coalesced into one, so that *all* symbols now sort before *all* alphanumerics...

2. ...with the exception of the hyphen and single-quote (and why the single-quote and not the double-quote?)...

3. ...and the coalescing didn't even respect ASCII order. For example, the subsequence "< = >" comes before "{ | }" in ASCII, but after it in Outlook sort order.

I'm sure somewhere there's a PM with a spec and a reason for why this is the way it is - I just want to find that spec :)

re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

John — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:19:17 GMT

Thanks for the post. I was wondering why the ASCII order seemed to be out the window.

re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

stutz@copper.net — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:39:18 GMT

Thank you, Jonathan for all that tedious work.

Our purposes in knowing the sorting order of keyboard characters were almost the same: labeling/ naming folders so they sort in a specific order. I had ALL computer file directories in mind, viz., My Computer/ Windows Explore & their relatives. I hope you were faster than I. 9-1-2007 I typed out all characters which I could remember (rather than downloading keyboards full thereof, and sorted individual characters in Word Perfect. It took me AGES, so you know I can appreciate your diligence.

I know that work was saved 9-1-2007. Well, so I believed! Frequently I copy basic text from WordPerfect or other programs onto Notepad .txt files and delete the much more consumptive files. That's so the files do not consume so much storage "space". When I looked for a .txt file re. 'Character sorting order' today, the text file page was blank! Ugh! My Search Companion is not working right now, so did not want to spend another hour or so looking for a .wpd doc which might (likely) have gotten deleted.

Then thought of the world of persons who might have already done such work. Yes, Googling 'Keyboard character sorting order' led me to your blog and to bliss!

You have it all right there on three lines!

And I have those lines on a .txt doc named

Character sorting order.txt

Making a shortcut for my desktop 'Shortcuts' folder, then making another shortcut and changing its name to

! " # $ % & ( * , . / : ; @ [ ] ^ _ { | } ~ + < = >

(beginning with two spaces) for the desktop makes the order visible

re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

Roman — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:46:14 GMT

Single Quote can be used as part of a name, thus attempts at honoring the alphabet.

re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

RBM — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:45:48 GMT

Can you sort Outlook 2007 by categories even when there are multiple categories assigned to one entry? It's not possible in Outlook 2003.

re: Using funny characters in Outlook 2007 folder and category names - what's the sort order?

MDS — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:03:29 GMT

Thanks for posting this.

The frustrating thing about this sort order is that there is no option for putting non-alphabetic folders at the end. Some folders are really important and need to be at the top. Others are really unimportant and need to be at the bottom. And sometimes both are really important but its also very important not to misfile. Thus the desire for space.