[whpalmer4]

There are two different varieties of sorting available in OmniFocus. One just rearranges the view, the other rearranges the data. Sorting with the view bar controls or the view menu does the former, and if you have two windows open in OmniFocus, only the one in which you change the settings changes. It sounds like you might wish to actually rearrange your data, which changes the order in which OmniFocus will present the actions to you if you are doing them one at a time, and will change the contents of all windows. To sort in this fashion, make a group selection of the items you wish to sort in the outline view, then use Edit->Sort->(sort key) to make the sort happen.

There's an additional wrinkle that I might as well tell you about while I've got your attention. The view sorting works on entire projects when you are in the project view, but on individual actions when you are in the context view. This allows you to show your projects listed by alphabetical order, or when the projects are due, but if you want to look at a list of individual actions and see what absolutely needs to get done first out of all of your tasks, you don't have to scroll through the entire list of projects trying to ascertain what has the earliest due date.

Between the two, I think most new users get confused at least a few times!