Navigator is a great tool to get an idea of the structure and complexity of a document. You can quickly navigate to an object by double-clicking on its name. On documents with rather a small number of "objects" (tables, frames, images, sections, drawing objects -- not checked for OLE objects, hyperlinks and references), the order in which they are listed is not that important since the list is short. But as soon as the list contains several dozens of elements, being able to clicking designate the desired objects is of prime importance. Even if a systematic naming scheme is adopted, it is not immediate to point to the right one. Headings and Comments lists are ordered in document appearance, bookmarks in alphabetical order. It looks like the others are listed in chronological order (i.e. how they were entered in the list without further processing). This makes the lists quite unusable. Could it be possible to sort the lists, either in document order or alphabetical order of the names? Maybe document order would be preferred by the majority of users who don't give a specific names to their objects. What I say above is probably also valid in Calc and Impress. Draw, Math and Base are out of the way. Possibly related enhancement: #86395
Ability to selectively toggle the display order (Navigator & Status bar?) between document sequence, and alphabetized by object name would be quite handy. Some advantages to doing it globally, but alternative of doing per object type might be easier to implement. Needs some UI design...
(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #1) > Some advantages to doing it globally, but alternative of doing per object > type might be easier to implement. > > Needs some UI design... Pretty simple to have a context menu item "Sort" with "(x) Appearance in document" and "( ) Alphabetically" below. The bookmark order has been requested in bug 86395 but let's keep this ticket open for the more general request. Don't see any benefit from doing it globally, besides consistency (this function should be available on similar lists too, eg. bug 134331).
Jim Raykowski committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/b802cecbc0f57d0ba0d70434cf619a7e91c7393f tdf#86395 tdf#104253 tdf#147658 tdf#135043 SwNavigator sort enhancement It will be available in 7.4.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Maybe this should be closed as FIXED? or does it remain open because there is not a "global" sort? Meanwhile, for local sorting, I can verify that "Sort alphabetically" is available in the context menu in Navigator and this toggle can be used as expected for all the different categories (e.g., Tables, Hyperlinks, Bookmarks, Frames, etc.) Version: 7.6.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 98f0dd5e15733ac7f1d929d06ab230b5f04121d5 CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19044; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win Cool feature! Thanks Jim! Very useful.
(In reply to sdc.blanco from comment #4) > does this ticket remain open because there is not a "global" sort? Commit b802cecbc0f57d0ba0d70434cf619a7e91c7393f explains that Footnotes and comments cannot be alphabetized. fwiw -- do not see any value in alphabetizing footnotes. Navigator already lists footnote number. Hard (for me) to imagine an actual use case for alphabetizing footnotes. -- less sure about comments. Does not seem necessary (in general), but could imagine someone wanting to use a coding system at the beginning of comments to "categorize" them, and "sort alphabetical" to collect them together.
(In reply to sdc.blanco from comment #4) > Maybe this should be closed as FIXED? or does it remain open because there > is not a "global" sort? > I am under 7.4.3.2 and it looks that the patch answers my request. So OK for FIXED.