Sorting Notes by Date

Jot+ Notes automatically sorts notes using the note title. Normally notes are sorted in dictionary order, but you can also sort by number, where Jot+ Notes will parse an integer value from the note title to sort with. Finally, notes can be unsorted for the user to manually order them.

A frequent support query relates to sorting notes by date. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as it sounds! Dates can be written in a bewildering array of formats, as demonstrated here:

10 Dec 2002
2002-12-10
December 10, 2002
12/10/2002
10/12/02
12/10
10th December
etc etc etc...

All of the examples above are common versions of the same date. Non-English month names just add more complexity. Plus note that dates 12/10/2002 and 10/12/2002 are ambiguous: European and US users would read these as different dates!

While Windows provides a lot of information about date formats which could reduce some of this complexity, that information would be useless if the notefile was opened on another computer with different locale settings (France vs Japan for example).

The solution to this problem, as defined by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in their standard ISO-8601, is to write dates in a single unambiguous format: YYYY-MM-DD. Example: 10 Dec 2003 should be written 2003-12-10, and 4 Jul 1776 should be written 1776-07-04 (Note the leading zeros in month and day)

Some of the advantages of this format: It is unambiguous regardless of locale; it is language-neutral, so French and Japanese readers will see the same date; it is compact and clear.

One additional advantage of this format, noted by ISO, is that if you sort a set of dates in this format, using a standard alphabetic/dictionary sort, the dates will automatically sort into the correct order! No special date parsing/sorting algorithms are required.

For Jot+ Notes users, date sorting is actually quite simple:

Put dates at the start of the note title, using the YYYY-MM-DD format
In the parent note's properties, select Sort Order = Title (or Title Reverse)
Your notes will now be sorted by date