Please bring back user defined sort order in plex
I work with medical data that has its own structure which does not lend itself to the current sorting features. If the other features of the current release were not so compelling in other areas I'd be back to good old PB3 in a flash for that feature alone. I'm begging here! ;-}

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John Sampson commented
Structure of data may have all kinds of order besides the ones TheBrain provides. Also, desired sort order of sibling thoughts may vary from one "family" to another. Could a particular sort order be applied to a selection of thoughts?
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Doro commented
Here's another "Pretty, Pretty Please!?!" for that feature ...
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Michael Cullen commented
It's been over 11 years of asking for manual sorting of child thoughts. What has to be done to make this happen? Really?!?
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LT commented
USER-DEFINED SORT ORDER FOR THOUGHT CHILDREN - Please
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scribbly commented
YES!! Personally I'd opt for a weight in metadata that you could edit manually or automatically by reordering the plex.
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Brian Davis commented
Please allow for user defined sort order for jump thoughts, parents and children from any given thought by click and drag to reorder. Wrike dos this. Would love to see you sync with Wrike. I am a screenwriter and do not use the brain currently only because this feature is missing. If it did, I would use it hourly like I used to use it.
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Brian Davis commented
You could d it like Wrike does it! One master priority list. However, I vote for a combo. Default to like Wrike does it. But, allow each parent to have an override switch so that children for that parent aren't sorted with the universal order. Best of both worlds! The Brain and Wrike should really be the same App some day. I am looking forward to when Diigo, Wrike, Evernote are either tightly integrated or the same App.
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Richard R. Bonilla commented
An Orderly Brain
TheBrain is the most sophisticated tool available to put the most influential resource known to mankind - The Thought! With that said I wish to join the chorus asking for the most important tool of TheBrain, namely, Influencing the Order of Thoughts.
Like my fellow Thoughtineers please place this request on a higher level of priority.
USER-DEFINED SORT ORDER FOR THOUGHT CHILDREN
We need the ability to sort any selection of Thought Children under any Thought Parent other than the default ASCII sort order. Permit us to create an on-the-fly user-defined sorting scheme. You could provide a "sorting engine" that defines an arbitrary sort order (red, orange, yellow; north, east, south, west;tall, medium, short;kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species;great-grandparent, grand-parent, parent,child; etc). Once a "Sorting Engine Table" (SET) is defined it can be saved by the user. Give these SETs a clever name (a metaphor, the way you use "brain"," thought", "child", etc) that your marketing team can use! Maybe use a DNA-sequencer or "gene" -kinda thing!One suggestion is to use an algorithm that is used in spreadsheets. You know, you list a row of sequential items in rows. Then you select that arbitrary sequence and drag that little thing-a-ma-bob in the lower right corner... well, you know how it works better than I do!
So, how 'bout it! What Brain could have evolved without good DNA/genes! Create your own genes and let them "sequence" a group of selected Child Thoughts to make any Thought Parent proud!
Just thinking about this is very exciting!
Keep in mind what I have learned after 60 years of breathing. "If you think of it, someone else already has". If you don't don't figure out how to do this (and you are very good at doing figuring things out) then someone else will. THAT will be a major motivator for someone to find and use. I just hope that TheBrain will do it. "More Sooner than Later"
Thank you for all of the incredible features in the current feature in TheBrain. It still is the best Thought Organizing Tool available to clever minds!
Thank you for your time!
Richard -
mark lewis commented
Sort by "weight relative to parent" (build weight into link?)
- thought X might be a critical child thought to one parent but trivial to another parent
- ANY weighted child (relative to parent) has more weight than a non-weighted one. -
Joseph commented
Another bring back... Once upon a time you coud expert thebrain to a browser where you could see the plex but it was static (non-editable) but fluid like the actual plex ... what happened to that? It was a great feature... the current html is clunky and takes away from the fluidness that mimicked the actual plex -- even though it was read only... bring it back, please!
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Brian Davis commented
As a filmmaker, I really need TheBrain to be more flexible and mobile. This would open up the flexibility to the point where I could really use it. I also would enjoy a Jump Left thought and a Jump Right Thought. This would allow modeling that currently requires spreadsheets and tables. This is one of two pieces of software that have me wanting to get a windows tablet. I still think this would be best on an ipad natively instead of web based only.
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Michael Turner commented
I need to add that putting numbers in front of thoughts for sorting under one parent causes problems with other parents.
Sorting by date modified or date created does not work either, because thoughts are continuously updated and are usually not created in the best order for sorting.
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Michael Turner commented
This is a wonderful idea, bordering on the line of necessity. I use this program as a knowledge base for my college studies as a teaching major with a math emphasis. Just two weeks into college with this program, many thoughts are starting to look like a disorganized mess of small network hubs - and this is even with sibling thoughts being hidden.
Simply allowing automatic sorting respective to the active thought by link type first, link text next, and thought name last would clear up most of the confusion and allow me to draw a more organized and thorough representation of subject knowledge.
I've already crashed and burned once in college in part because I did not have a knowledge base for my material - and I'm hoping this program will help me prevent that rather than being a liability mid-way into the semester.
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Mark Michael Lewis commented
At least let me arrange by tags and/or link types! Pretty please!?
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Brian Davis commented
This is my chief complaint with TeamBrain. I have to put a number in front of everything. Yuck! Drag and Drop order. Let us select each parent separately and allow us to see the Order change. We should get a different drag and drop order for each parent and perhaps a default one for the thought itself.
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PJ Eby commented
Since it's possible to order by creation date or modified date or name -- all of which are modifiable fields -- it seems like it should be even more simple to have, say, a "weight" field that gets adjusted when you rearrange things.
If the real problem is that the same thought can have multiple parents, then why not associate the weight with the link instead of the thought? Links can certainly have attributes now.
At the VERY least, offering the option to *reverse* sort order would be very helpful: that way at least when you create things they'd come out first-to-last instead of last-to-first. That would help a LOT.
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Bill commented
Please add user defined ordering in outline view that allows the user to just drag and drop (or use up down arrows) to position each thought in the desired order I. It's very disappointing a feature this basic is not possible in $300 software without using some type of workaround. Please put it in a next update!
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Oliver commented
again: I work in a big university of applied sciences, 2500 scientists. TheBrain could find more users, but when I tell them that sorting is not possible they stay away.... it is simply not possible that this is so complicated to code.
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Oliver commented
I'm in the market of a mind map tool. Thats weird - advertisment of thebrain was to have a tool functioning as my brain. Thankfully my own thoughts are ordered as I want them... ok looking for a other tool.
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lynn commented
This feature would be very helpful. Please include in next update.