I have a record of my book group books and notes that work beautifully in map view but doesn’t sort well in the outliner. I would like to sort the list by the date attribute.
In the attributes for notes and prototypes they are individually set to sort by date. Do I need to set something else for the outline to sort by that date attribute?
Which date attribute do you want to sort on? There are several.
Windows > Inspector > Action Inspector > Sort can be used to sort a container (parent) by almost any attribute, including system-defined date and user-defined date attributes.
If you don’t want to put your notes inside a container in order to sort them, then use the Attribute Browser view rather than the Outline view and use the Attribute Browser controls to sort that view.
A note’s sort-related attributes work on a note’s children, i.e. when that note acts as a container. This is why, as @PaulWalters has already noted above, you need to look at the parent note of your map as it is that container which sorts the outline view of your map’s contents.
It is worth bearing in mind that the Outline view is the closest reflection as to how the underlying data is stored. A note’s $OutlineOrder and $SiblingOrder reflect the order in which notes were added to a container (and thus to the outline as a whole). $OutlineOrder isn’t visible in a map view except if the notes overlap: for more see this on outline vs. map behaviour.
I take it then because my notes are at the top-level rather than in a container I can only get a sorted view equivalent to outline in the attribute browser? From what Mark has said the outline order is set elsewhere.
Just move all your notes into a container.
I commend @PaulWalters suggestion. Why? Because the $Sort value at root level (which is where your notes are currently) is the same as the document default. Whilst you might change the latter but that is then inherited all through the doc and might not be pertinent throughout the document. So, just move your map’s content down into a container, the map will look the same in map view.