Any way to Restore Last Manual Sort Order or Prevent from being Overwritten accidentally?

Question

     Help!
     I'm constantly accidentally overwriting painstakingly created manual sort ordering (sometimes hours but more often months of accumulated work) in folders with files numbering up to 1,000, when i, however breifly, switch to another sort ordering (size, date modified etc) to check something, immediately forget that i'm in another sort order, and, unthinkingly (actually i guess i'm thinking of a lot of other things) drag a file to another position, this immediately destroys any past manual sorting i've established, overwriting it with this new inadvertent manual ordering.
     I've tried CommandZ (edit undo) but that only undoes my last rating or labeling, i've rushed to force quit Bridge through the activity montior hoping i will catch it before its overwritten, but obviously i am not as fast as a computer, and i don't think this has ever worked.
Is there any way or any script someone has written to formally save a manual sort order? Is there anything i've missed to attempt restoring it? Has anyone, repeatedly foiled by this, written something that would give a warning and require confirmation say for instance, if i tried to drag or move a file while in another sort ordering (this seems like something that should have existed the minute the opportunity was given to create manual organization). Would anyone be willing to?
     Seriously, me forgetting almost every time isn't going to change and, more vexingly, it's even happened when i didn't mean to move anything but fumbled momentarily while in another sort order. I think most people might forget because (in the context of computing) we are conditioned to expect a warning if something we have just created is about to be written over or discarded, and since there is no option to formally save a manual ordering we have just created.
     Also, if this was in the real world, moving a single file would not reshuffle everything on your desk. If i had the option to formally save a manual organization i would NOT forget to do this and would use it, as i've wished for one every time spent a while rearranging files. Knowing how easily all the hours (much less months and years of cumulative work) of organizational work can be accidentally lost makes working within Bridge unpleasantly anxious.
      I'm literally willing to do anything including installing some sketchy 3rd-part scripts (though honestly i have no idea what that means or how to do it). I extentively use and rely heavily upon this function so this is a fairly serious Achille's heel. It's like watching your incredibly important meticulously constructed house of cards collapse with a careless but innocent sigh, or like having the equivelent of a not even charming cat dance across your keyboard during a live concert, etc etc....
     Also it is not usually appropriate, given the context, to batch rename everything to preserve a manual ordering w sequence numbers, etc. Often the filenames are considerably (but necessarily, to connote important differences) long already, and when i have to rearrange things in the future would have to do that each time, etc, etc, making for even more unwieldly filenames that didn't have any substantive information at the beginning. I'm looking for a way to make this function (manual sort ordering), well, more functional, secure and stable, the workarounds i've considered cause too many additonal problems.
     Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer, and as this is my first attempt to use the forums as i live on a boat with no regular net access, would appreciate any forum etiquette corrections, and advance apologies for any misspellings, dyslexic and spellcheck does not seem to work in this interface. next time will edit in external wordprocessing program beforehand,
          li'l mc szpf
     PS i'm on a 27" mac w CS4 Design Premium, w up to the minute OS (10.6.8) and Adobe software updates installed recently (i do not often move the monster but this week was housesitting w net access, so she has had all recommended shots and vaccinations....)
     PPS I know most of y'all might be running the newest and the latest of everything, but, i'm fairly certain this is still a problem in recent versions as this has happened to me at school where all the macs are running cs5. Though if it's been addressed somehow in cs6 would update entire suite just to fix this one problem in Bridge. I've tried many searches and found nothing relevant or wouldn't bother the considerable expertise and resources of an official forum, was extremely hesitant to ask (feared getting snapped at for unwittingly broaching forum etiquette) but it is truly the bane of my considerable Bridge existence, so was willing to risk the imaginary censure and opprobrium....
Message was edited by: PECourtejoie

Answer 1

That is a good question, to do this requires two functions and a restart of Bridge all done automagically
Copy and paste the script into ExtendScript Toolkit
This gets installed with Photoshop and can be found:-
PC: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Utilities
MAC: <hard drive>/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities
Start Bridge
PC: Edit - Preferences - Startup Scripts
Mac: Adobe Bridge menu - Preferences - Startup Scripts
At the bottom click the "Reveal Button" this will open the folder where the script should be saved.
Close and restart Bridge.
Accept the new script.
To use:
Tools - Backup Manual Sort
This will backup the hidden manual sort file .BridgeSort to .BridgeSortSave
Tools - Restore Manual Sort
This will copy the .BridgeSortSave back to .BridgeSort and will close and restart Bridge so that the manual sort is restored.
if( BridgeTalk.appName == "bridge" ) { 
var backUpManSort = new MenuElement( "command","Backup Manual Sort", "at the end of Tools" , "backupms" );
var RestoreManSort = new MenuElement( "command","Restore Manual Sort", "at the end of Tools" , "restorems" );
backUpManSort.onSelect = function () {
var fileSort = new File(app.document.presentationPath +"/.BridgeSort");
var fileSave = new File(app.document.presentationPath +"/.BridgeSortSave");
if(fileSave.exists) fileSave.remove();
fileSort.copy(fileSave);
fileSave.hidden=true;
RestoreManSort.onSelect = function () {
var fileSort = new File(app.document.presentationPath +"/.BridgeSort");
var fileSave = new File(app.document.presentationPath +"/.BridgeSortSave");
if(!fileSave.exists){
alert("No backup file exists");
return;
app.document.sorts = [{ type:"string",name:"document-kind", reverse:false }];
if(fileSort.exists) fileSort.remove();
fileSave.copy(fileSort);
fileSort.hidden=true;
app.document.chooseMenuItem("mondo/command/new");
app.documents[0].close();
app.document.sorts = [{ name:"user",type:"date", reverse:false }];
Hope this works for you.