Biblatex: how to automatically sort citation by year (sortcites=ynt) when references are sorted by name (sorting=nyt)

Question

I want to sort in-text citations by year, but bibliography by name. It sound exactly like this question.

However, suggested solution (using \usepackage[sorting=ynt]{biblatex} and \printbibliography[sorting=nty]) does not work for me (see MWEB below). Indeed, the list of references remains year-sorted instead of name sorted.

Question: How to force sorting=nty in \printbibliography?

---

\documentclass{article}
    \usepackage[%
        backend=biber,%
        style=authoryear-comp,%
        natbib=true,%
        sorting=ynt%
    ]{biblatex}
    \addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
    \usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
    @book{key2000,
      author = {Author, A.},
      year = {2000},
      title = {Alphabetical fist \& Year last},
      publisher = {Publisher},
    }
    @book{key1900,
        author = {Boathor, B.},
        year = {1900},
        title = {Alphabetical last \& Year first},
        publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
    Citation should be year-sorted, even if \verb+\citep+ is random \citep{key2000, key1900}.% citation NOT year-sorted

    \printbibliography[sorting=nyt]
\end{document}

P.S.: At the opposite, using

\begingroup
    \newrefcontext[sorting=nyt]
    \printbibliography
\endgroup 

overrides the \usepackage[sorting=ynt]{biblatex} option (i.e. LoR is name-sorted, but in-line citations as well).

Answer 1

Update

With biblatex v3.18 and above you can use \localrefcontext and \GenRefcontextData to switch to a different reference context (e.g. sorting).

Use

\AtBeginRefsection{\GenRefcontextData{sorting=ynt}}

to make sure that each refcontext our document uses also generates an analogous refcontext with ynt sorting.

Then

\AtEveryCite{\localrefcontext[sorting=ynt]}

switches our citations to the ynt sorting refcontext. \localrefcontext only acts locally and need not be "closed" or reset because it happens inside a group.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,
  style=authoryear-comp,
  % sortcites=true, % not needed here because it is implied by style=authoryear-comp,
]{biblatex}

\AtBeginRefsection{\GenRefcontextData{sorting=ynt}}
\AtEveryCite{\localrefcontext[sorting=ynt]}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{key2000,
  author    = {Author, A.},
  year      = {2000},
  title     = {Alphabetical fist \& Year last},
  publisher = {Publisher},
}
@book{key1900,
  author    = {Boathor, B.},
  year      = {1900},
  title     = {Alphabetical last \& Year first},
  publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
  Lorem \autocite{key2000, key1900}

  ipsum \autocite{key1900, key2000}

  \printbibliography
\end{document}

See also Sort citations by year (ynt) and references by name (nyt) in custom biblatex style.

---

Solution for older versions of biblatex

Give the desired citation sort order at loading time. Then give the desired order for the bibliography in the new refcontext (\begin{refcontext}[sorting=<sorting>]...\end{refcontext}) for \printbibliography.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber,
  style=authoryear-comp, sorting=ynt,
  % sortcites=true, % not needed here because it is implied by style=authoryear-comp,
]{biblatex}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{key2000,
  author    = {Author, A.},
  year      = {2000},
  title     = {Alphabetical fist \& Year last},
  publisher = {Publisher},
}
@book{key1900,
  author    = {Boathor, B.},
  year      = {1900},
  title     = {Alphabetical last \& Year first},
  publisher = {Publisher},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
  Lorem \autocite{key2000, key1900}

  ipsum \autocite{key1900, key2000}

  \begin{refcontext}[sorting=nyt]
  \printbibliography
  \end{refcontext}
\end{document}

I used

\begin{refcontext}[sorting=nyt]
\printbibliography
\end{refcontext}

instead of the slightly shorter

\newrefcontext[sorting=nyt]

to be on the safe side if there are citations after the bibliography.

---

Hints and Caveats

Some more explanation since this comes up more often.

biblatex does not allow the sorting option for \printbibliography any more. It was removed because it could lead to weird sorting results.

Instead, now you use 'refcontexts' to control sorting. A refcontext controls sorting, labelprefix and sortingnamekeytemplate and a few other things (possible more in the future).

An entry can appear in different refcontexts and any extra label data (extradate, extraalpha) will be recalculated based on the specific details (e.g. sorting) for each refcontext.

This can lead to slightly counter-intuitive results in very contrived examples because the sort order may be determined by data that is invisible in the citation itself and those data leads to different sorting results in different schemes.

Here is an admittedly very artificial example that shows this behaviour with your set-up. It can be much easier to achieve such an effect with other pairings of sort schemes. The trick here was that nyt considers the volume for sorting while ynt does not.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear, sorting=ynt, sortcites]{biblatex}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{one,
  author = {Elk, Anne},
  title  = {Title},
  volume = {1},
  note   = {sorts first in ynt},
}
@book{two,
  author = {Elk, Anne},
  title  = {Title},
  note   = {sorts first in nyt},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\autocite{one,two} \autocite{two,one}

\begin{refcontext}[sorting=nyt]
\printbibliography[title={\refname{} (sorting \texttt{nyt})}]
\end{refcontext}
\end{document}

Answer 2

A 'quick and dirty' solution (less good than moewe's one) is use biblatex's sortcites=false option, to enable the manual sorting of in-line citations.

\documentclass{article}
    \usepackage[%
        backend=biber,%
        style=authoryear-comp,%
        natbib=true,%
        sorting=nyt,%
        sortcites=false,
    ]{biblatex}
    \addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
    \usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
    @book{A2000,
      author = {Author, A.},
      year = {2000},
      title = {Alphabetical fist \& Year last},
      publisher = {Publisher},
    }
    @book{B1900,
        author = {Boathor, B.},
        year = {1900},
        title = {Alphabetical last \& Year first},
        publisher = {Publisher},
    }

    @book{C1950,
        author = {Coathor, C.},
        year = {1950},
        title = {Alphabetical last \& Year first},
        publisher = {Publisher},   
    } 
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
    In-line citations should be manually sorted in the desired order, and the References list will be alphabetically sorted.

    Example: 
    \begin{itemize}
        \item This citation is manually year-sorted \citep{B1900, C1950, A2000},
        \item this one is manually shuffled \citep{C1950, B1900, A2000}.
    \end{itemize}

    \printbibliography[]
\end{document}