Go|Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically

Pick Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically from the Go menu to sort the tabs of all files in the current project alphanumerically by their file names. Alphanumeric order is like alphabetic order. But if your file names contain numbers, those numbers are interpreted as a whole. So Chapter2.txt comes before Chapter10.txt because 2 comes before 10. This sort order is also known as “natural sort”. Windows Explorer uses the same method for sorting files and folders by their names.

Note that the file tabs are sorted only at the moment you click on Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically. If you open more files, the alphanumerical order is not maintained. Tabs for newly opened files are either placed to the immediate right-hand side of the tab that was active when you opened the additional files, or after the last file tab. You can configure this in the Tabs Preferences.

You can also rearrange the tabs in any order you want by dragging them with the mouse. To drag a tab, click on it, hold the mouse button down, and move the mouse to the left or right. The tab will follow the mouse pointer until you release the mouse button. If you drag the tab to the left edge of the leftmost tab, and there are more tabs, presently invisible, to the left of that tab, then all the tabs will scroll to the right, allowing you to move the tab you are dragging further to the left. Similarly, you can drag the tab to the right edge of the rightmost tab to make the tabs scroll to the left.

You can make Windows Explorer sort files alphabetically rather than alphanumerically by editing the registry. First select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER depending on whether you want to change this for all accounts on your computer or only your own account. Then navigate to the key SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Policies\Explorer. Add the entry NoStrCmpLogical as a DWORD value set to 1. You may need to restart your computer for this to take effect. The Go|Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically command in EditPad respects this setting. It will sort files alphabetically rather than alphanumerically when Windows Explorer does so. The label on the menu item does not change to indicate this.

Go|Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically

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