I installed a new zenphoto to another directory and made a new album with the three images, sorted manually and presto - worked a treat first time. Now I have to decide whether to start all over again with google maps, comment box, FB Like etc to the new one or make do with out of order images.
Oh well, a stiff whiskey and start afresh might be the go.
Thanks for your help. Would love to have known where the glitch was.

Sounds generally like a database issue but just a guess and no idea why. Maybe my colleagues have another idea.

Have you tried to refresh the database ? (On the [i]Overview[/i] page)

Hi again, was going to start another site but it now also sorts differently to the backend again. What I found is no matter how I manually change the image order (by dragging for example) the ALBUM display page (frontend) always shows it in filename order even though when I click a thumbnail which goes to the IMAGE page, it then sequences in the correct backend manual order. So the problem lies in the album page displaying the order only in filename.
If I rename the files to the order I want them, it displays sequentially corectly in the album/thumbnail frontend. But surely I shouldn't need to do that?

No, are you sure you didn't set any options on the album for sorting itself? But as before it does work generally...

I just happened to double check that and the Album properties is definitely set to Sort Images By: - Manual.
Curly one?

try using a different browser. IE doesn't let some functions happen for some reason. Try firefox