How to sort in MS Word 2003 AND ignore bracketed words in sort

[Janey]

I have a dictionary of English and Japanese words. Each definition is
English first and Japanese second (the Japanese being written with
English characters). Each definition is one paragraph--I entered
after each definition was complete.

I want to add some more words and sort the whole list but
unfortunately some definitions begin with bracketed words. For
example:

abacus ...............
(to be taken) aback .................

If I ask Word to sort these it will put the bracketed words first. I
want it to sort based on the first unbracketed word--that's the way
almost all of the words are.

Is there any way to do this??? to have the sort command ignore the
bracketed words when it sorts??

Many thanks for any thoughts??

Jane

 

[Ed]

Hi Jane,

I'm using Word 2003 and the following procedure seemed to work for me:

Use Find/Replace to globally find the bracketed stuff (including the space
after the closing bracket) and replace it with itself formatted as hidden
text.

Ensure that the option to view hidden text is turned off in
Tools/Options/View/Formatting Marks.

Sort the data.

Turn on the option to view hidden text in Tools/Options/View/Formatting Marks.

Use Find/Replace to globally find the bracketed stuff again and replace it
with itself formatted as not hidden.

For both find and replace operations I used:

In the Find what box (\(* ) There is a space after the asterisk.

In the Replace with box \1

When performing the first find and replace, I clicked in the Replace with
box and specified a format of hidden (by clicking More/Format/Font and
ticking the Hidden check box).

When performing the second find and replace I unticked the Hidden check-box.

Hope this helps.

If you post any queries about this I may not be around to reply for a couple
of days but hopefully someone else can help.

Regards.

Ed

 

[Ed]

Hi again,

I had thought that in the Find what box I needed the outer brackets in order
to be able to refer to what was found by using \1 in the Replace with box. It
looks like they are not needed for that so the Find expression can be just
\(* (still with a space after the asterisk.

Cheers.

Ed

 

[Ed]

It's me again!

Two corrections (I'm doing well!)

I neglected to include the closing bracket in the Find what box.

The pattern should be \(*\) (now the space follows
the closing bracket rather than the asterisk).

I also should have said that you need to tick the Use wildcards box in the
dialog.

Hope I haven't left too many more errors :-(

Cheers.

Ed

 

[Janey]

Hi Ed,

Thanks again for your assistance thus far. I sent a reply directly to
you. I've done some more research and noticed the following:

1. I can delete / hide??????? the bracketed portions of the text.
2. Afterwards I can sort.

I can't revive the bracketed portions of the text. when I view the
formatting I don't see anything that says that there is hidden text. I
can see paragraph marks, and spaces, etc. so I believe I've just found
and deleted the bracketed portions of the text. I'm not an MS Word
expert so I'm not sure.

Also, I'm not sure how to revive the hidden bracketed text. Do I just
use the same replace parameters but say I want to find hidden text and
then unhide it? Man, I'm confused. Sorry.

I did a small test and the bracketed portions disappeared. But then I
couldn't unhide them--either before a sort, nor after.

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Janey

 

[Ed]

Hi Janey,

Man, I'm confused.

Actually, I think it's me that was confused

I think I was almost right in the first post but not quite. Sorry about that.

In the "Find what" box try "(\(*\) )" (without the quotation marks and with
a space before the final closing bracket).

What this expression should mean (although I may still be confused and it
may not) is "Find any text which has the following pattern: an opening
bracket followed by any characters followed by a closing bracket followed by
a space.

Use that expression both before and after the sort.

In the "Replace with" box, use "\1" (without the quotation marks) which
roughly means "Replace what you found with itself". Use it both before and
after the sort.

The only difference in the replacements before and after the sort should be
that before the sort you tick the find dialog's "More/Format/Font/Hidden"
option and after the sort you untick it.

Don't forget to turn off the "Tools/Options/View/Formatting marks/Hidden
text" option after the first replacement operation and before the sort, and
to turn it back on again after the sort and before the second replacement
operation.

Also, don't forget to tick the "Use wildcards" option in the find dialog.

Hope I'm not too far wrong this time.

Regards.

Ed

 

[Janey]

Hi Janey,

Hi Ed,

Again, thank you for your kind reply. I am testing out this option to
see if I can get it to work. I'll let you know.

Jane