Well, the exact steps will probably depends upon which program you're using.
With Scid vs. PC, after the database has been loaded, click the Game List window from the WINDOWS tab to list the games. To sort by year, just click the DATE column. (For a database of a few million games, give it five or six seconds for the sort process to complete.)
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Sort:
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According to the manual, it doesn't appear you can do this with with Fritz 13. You need ChessBase for that function:
This is what ChessBase give you beyond the functions of this program:
Automatic elimination of doubles, sort games according to different criteria, powerful clipboard functions.
This is one of the reasons why, although I have Fritz 13, Fritz 14, Shredder, etc., I almost never use them. Some of the freeware programs can do so much more. The authors of these freeware programs are usually easy to contact and often make changes for you, fix bugs, etc. Try finding the author of Fritz 13 and asking him to add this function and see where that gets you.
Of course, you can get around this Fritz 13 limitation with a two-step process. First, find a program that DOES allow you to sort the database by year. Load your database, sort it by year and then save it under a different name. Then just load that database with Fritz 13.
I have a small database of all of my OTB tournament games, and it's already sorted by year. When I load it in Fritz13, it lists the games in the order they appear in the file... sorted by year.
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