The latest version of Picasa (3.8) has made a big improvement in sorting. You can manually sort pictures in Picasa just by dragging them around and, now, if you upload those pictures to the web using the ‘Synchronize’ feature, they will keep your manual sort order.
Sorting Pictures in Picasa
For any given Picasa folder or album, you have 3 choices for automatic sorting: Name, Date, or Size. Just right-click on the folder or album icon and choose Sort Folder/Album by … When you click Name, they will be automatically sorted alphabetically by their filename. When you choose Date, they will be sorted from earliest to latest according to the date/time recorded when the picture was taken.
If you don’t like either of those sorts, you can drag the pictures into the order you desire. As long as you view them using Picasa, they will stay in that order because Picasa is remembering your custom sort order. This sort order is not understood by any other program. If you look at the same folder of pictures using Windows Explorer, for example, they will be in Windows Explorer’s specified sort order – usually by filename.
Sorting Pictures in Picasa Web Albums
Picasa Web Albums also gives you options for sorting. If you’re logged in to your Picasa Web Albums, open whatever album you want to work with simply by cllcking on it, then choose Edit and Organize & Reorder.
Once in the Organize and Reorder screen, you will have the options to sort by name, date, or to drag pictures around to the order you want.
Sorting in Picasa and Synchronizing to Picasa Web Albums
If you have used the ‘Sync to Web’ feature, you know that any folder or album in Picasa can be duplicated automatically in your web albums. But, up until version 3.8, your custom sort order would not follow. Now, you can also sync the sort order if you make sure that option is selected.
- Tools
- Options
- Web Albums
- Sync Photo Order – make sure this option is selected.
Now, when you choose to sync a folder or album to the web, you can drag photos around to a custom order in Picasa and you will see the order change in the corresponding web album automatically. Sometimes this happens instantly, sometimes not – be patient
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Picasa Geeks 
This is really good news that Picasa can now follow the date/time a picture was taken instead of forcing date/time last modified which messed up the order in Windows Explorer or Total Commander so that after using Picasa I had to change the attribs of the files one by one.
Great!
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In my experience, this is not a change. Picasa has always followed the ‘date taken’ for me.
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how can i alphabetize th actual photos in the album? i put captions on them and they won’t re-order!
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Hello Chris,
I’m not sure if this question has been asked before, but here is my problem,
I arranged my pictures by dragging them in picasa 3.9. Now, all I want to do is to move those pictures to another computer and keep the same “manual order” without rename any of them.
I would really appreciate if you could help.
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The option to sync Picasa sort order with Picasa web mentioned in this article for version 3.8 appears to have disappeared in 3.9 so we are back to the web sort order not being in sync with Picasa. WTF?
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IT IS AMAZING HOW FRUSTRATING THIS IS ABOUT PRESERVING THE ORDER OF PICTURES!.
I have spent weeks trying to over come this DESIGN FLAW:
“Now, all I want to do is to move those pictures to another computer and keep the same “manual order” without rename any of them.”
Going from 3.8 to 3.9 on Picasa screwed everyone with no recourse to recover. I have posted questions on forums and made attempts to contact support people at google and lack of response is appalling.
All i can say is Google, I am disgusted with your support and ability to resolve PICASA software bugs (excuse me DESIGN FLAWS) and obvious backward compatibility issues. I could overlook this if there was some recourse to help those customers who use your software. GREAT CONCEPTS, INEXCUSABLE SUPPORT!
Bruce, i am looking at renaming 1200 file (various picture formats and videos) to preserve the order.
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I’ve spent all morning cruising your site. Good tips here for a computer illiterate. :o)
I do have a question. I have a blog and have just been notified that my Picasa Web Albums storage is full and will need to buy more storage. I use Picasa for editing, but I’ve never utilized the Web Albums before, so everything there is photos that have automatically been uploaded when I published a post. After signing into my account and cruising through, I’m noticing that I folders with 900 or more pictures in them and then I have a ton of one picture folders. Is there a way to combine folders, or make a new folder and put existing ones inside of it to consolidate?
After reading through a bunch of your posts, I’m thinkin’ I’ll become a newly converted Web Album user.
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I’ve been truing to custom sort my albums and they keep reordering before my very eyes. It’s getting extremely frustrating. I’ll spend a lot of time ordering pictures, only to watch them suddenly reorder. I’ve updated my software, rebooted my computer, and can’t figure out what is going on. This statement- “As long as you view them using Picasa, they will stay in that order because Picasa is remembering your custom sort order” – is not proving true for me.I’m considering moving to another photo sharing application, because this is frustrating. Any suggestions?
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I’ve just started using picasa. I’ve created a few albums, but when I rearrange the order (usually just by clicking and dragging the photo to the new location), the photos do not stay in that order when I re-open the album later. In fact, this morning the photos in the album were almost completely arbitrarily arranged — not all by date, and not in the order in which I left them. This is picasa on my mac, not a picasa web. I’d love some advice for how to reorder photos in my album, and have the photos stay in that order. Thanks
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how do I convert an album to a folder?
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