How do I create a custom (text) sort order in Word?

[CherylH]

I need to create a custom sort order in Word. My values are in text format.
I do NOT want the sort to be ascending or descending, I want it to be
specific. Is there any way I can do this?

Here are my values and how I want the table to sort:

Not Started
Active
Transferred
Completed

 

[Jay Freedman]

You can't literally create a custom sort order, as that's not supported.

What you can do is insert a temporary column in the table, and put numeric
or alphabetic "tags" in the cells of that column to represent the values to
sort. For example, put an A in the temp column wherever Not Started appears,
B wherever Active appears, and so on. This can be done by a macro if you
have a lot of rows, or if you need to sort often.

Then sort on the temporary column, and finish up by deleting that column.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[SueT]

A simpler solution, which I use, is to number the values in the order in
which they should appear. Thus I would use:

1. Not Started
2. Active
3. Transferred
4. Completed

I suppose you could use Search & Replace, after sorting, to remove the
number, punctuation and space at the beginning of each value should it be
unacceptable for them to appear in the finished document.

 

[Peter Twydell]

A simpler solution, which I use, is to number the values in the order in
which they should appear. Thus I would use:

1. Not Started
2. Active
3. Transferred
4. Completed

I suppose you could use Search & Replace, after sorting, to remove the
number, punctuation and space at the beginning of each value should it be
unacceptable for them to appear in the finished document.

You could also make the sort key hidden. I use this method for address
labels, inserting the sort field (usually a surname) as hidden text in
front of the printable text. One advantage is that you don't have to
delete anything after the sort, and it's still there if you add other
data in between.