Tip Tuseday: Stupid Word Tricks

In my other life, I write a series of books called the Backroad Mapbooks. In these books, I write short descriptions of most every place to go hiking, fishing, camping, canoeing...you name it. The trails section alone can be 400+ write-ups, sorted alphabetically. 

But sometimes, these things aren't alphabetical. And it is a real pain to try and cut and paste 400 items into alphabetical order. 

Here's how to sort alphabetically.  If you are simply trying to arrange a list, it's pretty easy:

A

B

D

C

All you need to do is go to Table: sort: sort by paragraphs: Type Text: Ascending. It's filed under Table, but it will sort any list. But what happens when you have more than one paragraph, like this:

A

This is all about A

B

This is all about B

D

This is all about D

C

This is all about C

If you tried to sort them alphabetically, you would wind up with

A

B

C

D

This is all about A

This is all about B

This is all about C

This is all about D

And that is not what we're looking for.  First, you need to make sure that all the things you need to sort are the same Heading Level. For me, I have the style Heading 3: applied to A B C and D, while the write-ups (This is all about A) is either Body or Normal. 

Go under view:outline, you'll see that there is a plus (+) sign beside each of your headings (ABC and D), while the write-ups (body or normal) have a little hollow square.

Now if you select all and sort, it will sort alphabetically by header level.

In older versions of Word, you may have to use the following little hack.

In outline mode, if you double click on the plus sign next to A, it "sucks up" the write-up. Now the heading and the write-up are treated as one object. 

In the menu bar, there is also a plus (+) icon and a minus (-) icon. Selecting the heading and clicking on + expands the write-up, and - contracts it. 

Select all the text you want to sort, and click the - icon. Now you should see something that looks like this:

+ A

+ B

+ D

+ C

Now the whole write-ups is treated as one unit, and you can sort these the same way as you sorted a list.