One of the biggest holes in CoreData right now (10.4.6) is that it doesn't have support for keeping objects in a particular order. So, here's a quick hack I implemented to get around this. This is terribly inefficient, but since I'm not going to be able to use CoreData for anything but quickly throwing together helper tools until it does ordered items, I haven't yet looked into better solutions. The approach I'm using is simple: I'm going to add an integer index attribute to my model controlling the order of the items. Then I'm going to use KVO to watch for changes to my array controller that contains the ordered list of objects, and when this order changes, I'll redo the indexes. Once I have these indexes (which I needn't show anywhere in the UI), I can Fetch CoreData objects in a particular order So, I first need an outlet that I'll connect to my NSArrayController that manages displaying my list in an NSTableView. I'll call it listController. Then I can do // Make sure our list is always sorted by index: NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"index" ascending:YES]; [listController setSortDescriptors: [NSArray arrayWithObject: sortDescriptor]]; // Make sure we get notified of added items: [listController addObserver: self forKeyPath: @"arrangedObjects" options: NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew context: NULL]; in my windowControllerDidLoadNib: or awakeFromNib: method. The notifications will be sent to the following method: -(void) observeValueForKeyPath: (NSString *)keyPath ofObject: (id)object change: (NSDictionary *)change context: (void *)context { if( object == listController ) { NSArray* objects = [listController arrangedObjects]; NSEnumerator* enny = [objects objectEnumerator]; NSManagedObject* currList = nil; int x = 0;