Bug / Missing feature - hierarchical sorting

[Radek Pilich]

When I enable Hierarchy in Custom View Settings, then the hierarchy items don't respond to sort by setting. Even when I set multiple levels of sort by (due date, due date, due date), the items displayed through the Show hierarchy option are not being sorted and are displayed as they are in the task list. I think this is either a bug a there should be a secondary sort by option added to the Hierarchy settings section.

[Patricio Carranza]

hi All, I'm facing this same issue Radek describes here. is it a bug or sorting only works at level zero by design?

thanks!

Patricio.

[imajeff]

Now my order of the outline is all messed up because I thought, "no way it would mess up the order when I carefully created tasks in the logical order I need in my outline!"

Why would anybody want to mess that up? And is there any way to get my original outline back after it changed top level to alphabetical order? Seriously it should not have changed any order when I clicked the heading of the main All Tasks view unless there was a way to restore the order I created and dragged tasks to.

[Alyona (MLO Support)]

By design sorting in views applies only to top level tasks. But it is possible to enable sorting of subtasks in certain branches. Select all top level items, right-click ->  Advanced -> Sort subtasks
Here is a screenshot: https://content.screencast.com/users/alyonag/folders/Jing/media/0230c667-4f5b-494e-bf72-81be97aa4adb/2020-05-20_0001.png

[Alyona (MLO Support)]

I am sorry that you faced this issue. By clicking "Discard changes" (here is the screenshot) you should be able to get to the original outline if you previously saved your view. 

On Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 10:56:01 PM UTC+1 imajeff wrote:

Now my order of the outline is all messed up because I thought, "no way it would mess up the order when I carefully created tasks in the logical order I need in my outline!"

Why would anybody want to mess that up? And is there any way to get my original outline back after it changed top level to alphabetical order? Seriously it should not have changed any order when I clicked the heading of the main All Tasks view unless there was a way to restore the order I created and dragged tasks to.

[imajeff]

Interesting; I've never seen a "save view" button let alone any "Discard changes". This is the "Outline" tab, a default; Is that what a view is, each tab? I struggle just to get something I can be productive with, so I don't have time to create special views.

Is this documented, whatever you are referring to?

The heading I clicked only says "View: *All tasks > >" so there was not even any indication it would try to sort top-level tasks in alphabetical order. There is lack of communication as well as the problem I didn't even know what had been done or if I needed to undo until later.

The thing is, if a "saved" view is listing each task and in my custom order, do you mean when I clicked that heading which sorted by alphabetical order,  there is no "alphabetical order" mode being saved? It just independently saves an order which happened to be alphabetical that time? Is that why there is no way to change the sort back to not alphabetical?
This is perplexing, from a design point of view.

[Patricio Carranza]

thanks a lot  Alyona!! I hadn't seen that option to sort sub tasks. I'll try it!

[Alyona (MLO Support)]

The asterisk in "View: *All tasks > >" means that the view has unsaved changes. It is no longer the same as it was by default or last saved. In your case it changed when you clicked on the heading. 

You can "Discard changes" to revert the view to its original state. Or, it may be enough to only disable that alphabetical sorting - this can be done in the filter settings: Filter -> Group&Sort -> Sort -> set sorting to (None). 

We agree that this should be clearer, and we will consider improvements. Thank you for the comments, we really appreciate them. 

[imajeff]

Thank you Alyona,

I liked what you were saying, I just could not understand why I had no button right there where your screenshot shows the "Discard changes". Obviously, I could not click it until it was there...

Now I found out I have to expand by clicking "^ Filter" and then the Views collapse to show that. Interesting you cannot save a view until you hide the views. Then as I was right you cannot save Outline (defaut view) so I saved as "Outline1". Now I have what I needed. I've mentioned that I had not been using filters and maybe I knew 10 years ago. Now I see the button, which answers my other question how to even save a filter. Obviously, those options weren't available until I learned to expand that.

Also I am just suggesting that if you click on a heading that says "Task Name" you would know it will change sort order by that specifically, so maybe someone could think of better wording for users to know. I had thought maybe clicking it could change to not show All or something. At least you finally told me what it means, but I didn't know if that asterisk was there before so it all seemed so cryptic. Documenting is hard but I hope you have that explained someplace.

Thanks again

[Radek Pilich]

That's nice, unfortunately, this function is not available on Android.

Furthermore, I don't want to change the sorting of the outline itself - I want the the outline itself to be sorted alphabetically (I use number prefixes to sort folder and parent structures), I only want the tasks without children to be sorted according to the view sorting setting and only within that particular view, not in the main outline.