Sort by multiple columns in Windows Explorer 8

Question

I have a directory, which contains many files (more than a thousand), from different types (file extensions).

I can sort them by Date modified, or by Type. But seems that I can't sort them by both of these columns. In other words, what I want is to sort files by Type, which makes me able to find out files of similar types in a glance, then in each type, I'd like to sort them by Date modified, so that last modified file of each file type would be shown at the top of the list of that file type.

Is there a way in Windows 8 to support sorting on multiple columns? I can't find an option.

Answer 1

You can sort on multiple columns by shift-clicking.

A normal click sets the primary order, shown by the up/down indicator arrow. After that, you can press Shift while clicking on a column header to set the secondary, tertiary, etc. orders. The indicator will remain on the primary column and you can click any of those columns again to toggle the direction.

Here's an example, with three sort criteria (type, size, and date):

It's a little known feature and, as far as I know, there's no other way (menu command or keyboard shortcut) to do it.

This works on all Windows versions starting from Vista.

Answer 2

Not precisely what you want, but maybe helpful:

You can filter the folder to show only interesting file types, and then sort by date.

To filter, click on the drop down arrow next to the column title, and select the types you are interested in. Here's an example, showing only Word documents and sorting by date: