Hi Holt, [response below]
Thanks, I can see how to do this. But can I put in alpa order a word doc that is names and addresses?"
name
street
city, state
next name
street
city, state
etc
I want to put in alpha order by last name.
Depends on the data organization. Here's one way to do this:
Both ¶ and ^p are the symbols for a paragraph return, or hitting enter.
Let's assume you have:
name¶
street¶
city state¶
¶
name¶
street¶
city state¶
¶
Make a COPY of the doc and try this:
Hit ¶ on the Standard Toolbar so that you can see the paragraph marks
and line breaks and what is going on with your document.
First, do a Find and Replace. Put ^p^p in the Find box and %%%% in the
Replace box, Replace All. This will turn every two paragraph returns
into a placeholder that is unlikely to actually exist in the doc, and
get you:
name¶
street¶
city state%%%%name¶
street¶
city state%%%%name¶
Now, do a Find and Replace and put ^p in the Find box and ^l in the
Replace box. This will turn all the paragraph returns into line breaks.
Now put %%%% into the Find box and ^p into the Replace box, and you
should have:
name[line break]
street[line break]
city state¶
name[line break]
street[line break]
city state¶
Note that you have turned each name/street/city into a SINGLE paragraph
block--that's important. Make another COPY of the document, in case the
next step goes wrong.
Now Select and Table | Sort will sort each Paragraph by Name.
If you wrote the Name as Lastname, Firstname, then you are all fine,
just Sort.
If you wrote it as Firstname Lastname, then you have to do a tricky Sort.
Select all, go to Table | Sort. Click on Options in the dialog and set
the separator as a space (type a space into the box, it will be
invisible, that's okay). OK back to the Table Sort dialog.
Set the Sort By to Field 2 instead of Paragraphs.
NOTE: things that will screw this up--names like Mary Jane Abbey will be
sorted by Jane, not Abbey. Relocate them manually.
