Now Playing -sorting customization help?

[Bcc]

Found a partial workaround read edit below***
So I'm fairly new to Musicbee and Ive been trying to get something which I assume is fairly basic functionality to work, but for the life of me cant figure it out.  In my previous music player you could set up the NowPlaying (playlist in the old program) to display different fields. Not only did it display by the fields but it also sorted by them and in that order. So if for example i put [artist] first then [album] then [track number], it would sort by artist then within each artist it would sort by album from that artist and then by track for each album.

Now in MusicBee I was able to add fields to this list through the set displayed fields option but each column seems to act independently of each other. Therefore i could sort by artist but the albums for each artist wouldn't be sorted ect..... So i looked at options for customizing the columns and found out about virtual labels (Edit-Preferences-Tags(1)-Define New Tags. I was able to add <Artist> and <Album> to the same column and it would sort by artist and then album. I thought I had this problem resolved until I realized using this method makes that column not searchable, so I can't search (by typing when the Now Playing windows is active) the Artist or Album anymore. Maybe because virtual tags are not written to the database?

Edit:  Upon typing this out I realized that I could add the virtual label for sorting and then just add the remaining single columns (which are searchable) and then shrink the single columns by dragging them over so they basically take up very little space. I'll leave this up incase anyone else has trouble getting this setup or if someone has a more efficient way of getting this working.

Edit 2: It seems while the artist and title are search-able, the album column is not. Is this intentional or a bug?

[Zak]

First, the Now Playing List shows songs that are queued to play in the order they will be played (shuffle settings notwithstanding). It:
a) isn't a playlist as such, and
b) doesn't really have an equivalent in Winamp or Foobar.

Instead of adding songs to the Now Playing List and then sorting them - you should sort them as needed in the main file display and then add them to the Now Playing List. Tracks will then play in the order they were in when they were added.

Earlier discussion here:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=16171.0

Second, there is no need to use virtual tags for sorting. To sort on multiple columns, hold Ctrl while clicking the second and subsequent column headings. If you have different ordering you switch between a lot, you should set them up via Edit > Preferences > Sorting/Grouping and right-click a column header in the main track list to apply.

You may also find the Now Playing preferences useful to configure how MusicBee queues tracks when you double click a track or album in the main track panel.