How to Prevent a Flash Drive From Doing Alphabet Order

When the MP3 songs on your flash drive play in alphabetical order, it can be for different reasons. In some cases, it's a feature of your car stereo or other music player, and there's not much you can do about it except rename the song files. On many music players, however, the MP3 song order is determined by the order in which you saved the files to the flash drive. To make sure your computer writes the songs to the drive in the correct order, first create a playlist of the songs in iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Create a new playlist by selecting "New" and then "Playlist" from the File menu. (Press "Ctrl-B" if the File menu isn’t visible.) Drag the MP3 files from your iTunes library to the playlist.

Rearrange the songs based on the order in which they should play. First, click the blank square next to the Name header, then drag the song titles to rearrange them.

Press "Ctrl-A" to select all the songs from the playlist.

Copy the songs to the flash drive. Press "Windows-E" to open Windows File Explorer, or click the Mac desktop and press "Command-N" to open a Finder window. Drag the selected songs from iTunes to the USB icon in the file window.

Select "New Playlist" from the New Playlist menu. Add your MP3 files to the playlist by dragging them from your Media Player music library.

Drag the song titles in the playlist to change the order.

Press "Ctrl-A" to select all the songs from the playlist.

Click the "Sync" tab, then drag the selected songs to the "Sync List" box. Click "Start Sync" to copy the songs to your flash drive.

Plug the USB drive into your music player to see if the songs still play in alphabetical order. If they do, then the problem isn’t related to the flash drive, but is a feature of your music player.