TOPIC:

To create a list of files in file manager that are ordered by date, I tried year, month, day (ex. 2016-10-12 [ISO]) but that didn't work. If you look at the files in the 2017 folder you'll see that I came up with a kludge by entering a letter before the date, but that's cumbersome.

Which date format will put them in proper date order? Going forward, I want to do it correctly.

You almost had it right with the 2016 stuff.

You need to use a consistent number of digits for each date part in order for the sorting to work correctly. Use the yyyy-mm-dd format. For example:

2018-01-09
2018-10-12
etc.

Note that I am consistent in the digits above so that the number of characters in the date is always the same.

Also, if you are going to use the date in a file description with other text, you will have better results if you put the date at beginning of the text for the sort to work correctly with this approach. For example, use 2018-10-12 Meeting Minutes, not Meeting Minutes for 2018-10-12. Even if you misspell or change the text part, it still will sort correctly.