How to sort Windows 7 taskbar thumbnail previews?

Question

Here is a screenshot of the list of windows I have stacked in my Windows 7 taskbar. This is just for Explorer, but similarly I have lots of stacked windows of other processes as well.

Currently these stacks of windows are sorted in the order they were opened. All I want is to sort this stack of windows by their title so it's easier to look for them.

Superusers, can this be done?

Answer 1

Those aren't Jump Lists, they are Taskbar thumbnail previews. The Win Explorer Jump List looks like this when multiple windows are open:

When there are too many windows open and consequently too many thumbnails to fit on screen, the list changes to a simple text-based one as shown in the question's screenshot. Windows 7 and later use Application User Model IDs (AppUserModelIDs) to determine which windows to group/combine and which ones to treat separately. It is possible to sort windows within a group, but unfortunately Windows only allows window groups as a whole to be moved on the taskbar. However, a handy utility that provides the missing UI for various taskbar-related options/operations is 7+ Taskbar Tweaker (can be installed in portable mode):

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can either select Drag to reorder under Thumbnails to allow for simple dragging of thumbnail previews, or open the Taskbar Inspector, right-click the relevant window group and select the Sort group items option.

Answer 2

I think this is called Windows 7 Jump Lists, so renaming the title might help you find a better answer. The Jump List is made just to give you a quick access to the last used items. So the answer is no, you can't sort the folders or items in the Jump List of Windows 7. You can just increase the number of last used folders in your Jump List, but i see you already did that.

Windows 7 stores the Jump List files in this location:

C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

But there are a lot of third party Jump List programs for Windows 7. Maybe some offer what you need. I know Jumplist Extender and Lump Launcher.