What can I use to organise my photos in date order?

Q Over the years I have amassed a large number of photos taken on various mobile phones. Can you recommend a program – free, preferably – that I can use to organise these into date order? Jim Herrity

A Essentially, you have three choices: built-in tools, online services and free programs. For built-in tools, the Photos app that comes with Windows 10 is actually fairly good. It should recognise your phone or camera automatically when you plug it in and prompt to import any new photos it finds on the device. The default Collection view displays your photos by date, using the date info that’s embedded in your photo files. You can also create custom albums (click Create, then Album).

Online options include Flickr ( www.flickr.com) and Google Photos ( https://photos.google.com), both of which are free. In our opinion, Google Photos has the edge, because its mobile app (for Android and IOS devices) will automatically upload photos from your phone to your online collection, instantly backing them up. Google Photos lets you organise your files in several different ways, including by date order.

Other free photo-management tools for online and offline use include Xnview MP ( www.snipca.com/27371) and Irfanview ( www.irfanview.com). Irfanview is more of an image viewer, though you can use the tool’s Thumbnails view (press the ‘T’ key) to browse, rename, convert and organise your photo files. Xnview MP is better for organising photo files, though. Just point it to the folder where your photos are stored and use the tools to sort, filter, rate, label, categorise, tag, convert or export your images. The only minor drawback is that you’ll need to use Windows’ own options to import photos from your devices.