i drag and drop folders with music to the music folder of my clip using windows explorer. the mp3s r sorted alphabetically there, but not on my player when i play them. what the heck is going on? thanks to all that helped.
All of the music is organized by the ID3 tags associated with the music file.
You can edit the ID3 tags by using Windows Medai player or locate one of the how to videos on sandisks site for further help
How do you edit the ID3 tags in Windows Media Player?
Im not sure about what you mean by the “Call up Library” part. Is that on the clip or in the computer?
Anyway I have been trying to understand why my Clip would not sort my albums by track number. ( I like to listen to the songs on my albums in the correct order, maybe only me but anyway =) The mp3:s where copied to the Music folder with an artist directory and an album subdirectory
i.e. SANSA CLIP – MUSIC – Coldplay – X&Y – mp3 file
I used MP3Tag (excellent program btw) to edit the Id3v2 Tags (Title, Track, you name it…) and filenames to no avail. No matter what i did the sortorder would remain the same. Untill I accidentaly deleted a file on the clip and had to copy it back from the computer… Then that file was sorted last.
My, and maybe others, problem was that i edited the files on the clip and the Sansa sorts files by the time they were added to the clip. It doesnt give a **bleep** about Tags. (Not for sorting purposes anyway.) If your mp3:s are sorted correctly on your computer they should get copied in the correct order, thus sorted on the clip as they are on you computer.
In short: sortorder is by filedate, not by filename or tags
My Sansa Clip has the v01.01.18F firmware
And all files were copied using MSC mode.
Tyrion sez: " In short: sortorder is by filedate, not by filename or tags"
Interesting…I’ve been doing quite a bit of retagging and “regression testing” lately, attempting to reveal all the Clip’s…nuances, shall we say…regarding tag issues, and this is one I had not noticed yet.
I’ll take a close look at this because, I agree - many albums **MUST** be listened to in order, or the Album menu is essentially useless.
Pink Floyd The Wall, for example. Shuffle that - and it’s hardly enjoyable, to say the least. And I’m not really looking forward to altering file times so they play in order, so I hope there’s some other explanation…
BTW - Mp3tag is the BOMB
EDIT - OK I just checked this out (firmware version 01.01.18A) and something is different between what I am seeing and what Tyrion is reporting. Note that all my MP3s are consistently tagged, id3 v2.3 / UTF-16 blar blar blar
I have found that selections within a given album ARE sorted by filename; i.e. numeric if filenames are formatted as “01 - First Song to be Played.MP3” and “02 - Second Song to be Played.MP3”. The songs will be played in that order.
If the numbers are stripped off the front of the filename, the sorting then is alphabetic. In the above example, they will still play in the order listed because that IS the alphabetical sorting (“F” before “S” ). BTW, “Goodbye Cruel World” playing after “Empty Spaces” doesn’t work out in the album selection previously mentioned 
Sadly, the Track Number id3 tag seems to be ignored by the Clip - rendering it irrelevant here. Hopefully a future firmware release will correct this as I am hesitant to retag all my content to have filenames prefixed with play order numbers (not any problem to rename files by tag with Mp3tag, rather it is a philosophical problem…). I’ll probably just do it anyway.
BTW - are you sure that shuffle mode is OFF??
Message Edited by Click on 01-23-2008 07:33 PM
Strange… mine plays by track # in the id3 tag… wonder why yours wont click… I’ma do some poking around and see if i can figure out why
I can only confirm my earlier report.
My Sansa Clip, 01.01.18.F, does indeed sort by the time the mp3 was copied to the clip.
My files are also named by tracknumber - title i.e. “08 - The Odyssey” and are tagged with id3 v2.3 / UTF-16.
If I copy a folder with mp3:s from computer to clip it sorts correctly. If I then delete track number 2, for example, on the clip and copy it again from the computer - nothing else changed - it sorts last.
If I instead edit the file on the clip with MP3Tag the sort order remains the same even when I change filename or title and track tags.
(All connections to computer in MSC mode)
And yes, shuffle mode is OFF 
PS I have the clip version with FM radio, dont know if that matters.
I have my clip only for five days now but already encoutered the problem of song ordered
and I belive I found the problem and a suggested solution.
It seems that the clip sorts the songs by the “track” number in the ID3 tag BUT it has a bug.
If the track # is 1, 2, 3, … 10,11,12 it gets confused. In ordet for it to read the track number correctly
I changed all numbers to be 2 digit numbers. So when I changed the trak numbers
to 01, 02, 03, … 10, 11, 12 It worked fine.
I hope that Sandisk people also read these posts so they can verify it and add it to the
bug list to be fixed.
I’ve been lurking, and thought I would add my 2 cents. I have the Sansa 2 Gig, have not updated firm ware, don’t know what version I have, will look later. However, I have had the sort order problem on several players, Sansa or other wise. I use MP3Tag, I have an audio book with 255 mp3 files, that I have to play in order. I have the Title in order of 001 through 255. The same for Track number.
I use the drop and drag method in Windows 2000.
When I try to drag the entire 255 files at one time, Windows will not copy them over “in order”. They all end up on the player and will appear in order when viewing the Sansa folder in Windows, but the Sansa player will not show them or play them in order.
Track 001, title 001, for some reason gets “copied” somewhere in the middle of the transfer process. When that happens, the Sansa will NOT see it, or play it in order. Track 001, for example has appeared right after track 015, or some such.
For Sansa to get it right, I have to drag each file “in order” and make sure it gets copied before dragging the next file. If copied that way, and if all the id Tags are “correct”, in order, and no mistyping O for Zero, they will appear, and play, in the correct order on the sansa.
I believe it has something to do with “how” they are being copied, i.e. using the Sansa as a simple thumb drive, drag and drop, and not using XP or windows Media player, etc. I they get moved to the player out of order, they WILL show up in the correct order when viewing the music folder on the Sansa, but Sansa does not show, or play, them in the correct order. Belive me, it’s not a problem with 10 songs, but when you have to copy 255 files, it gets to be a pain in the ***.
So, the Sansa, when copying files in this mode, will only “play” them in the order you “copy” them.
Eh, mine seems to play in alphabetical order by song title, unfortunately. I need to play with my ID3 tags some more, but that’s all I’m ever able to get.
Playlists.
I use my 2 GB clip for audiobooks, and I transfer them using the OverDrive Media console. Works great, except the first part invariably goes to the bottom. In Media Player it is in the proper order, with the tag being “0”. It could be worse (they could shuffle), but it’s still a pain.
