Sorting a list of content in Word

I’m used to sorting columns in Excel, as that’s one of the main things you do. But I never really thought about sorting content in a Word document, as it (in my mind) is just unformatted “stuff.” But, you *can* sort a list of content in Word, and it’s pretty slick. Here’s how…

Here I have a simple list of names that are unsorted:

In order to sort it, I highlight the list and click on the Sort icon in the Paragraphs section of the Ribbon Bar:

In the Sort Text dialog box, I use the default option of Sort by Paragraphs and click OK:

And I now have a sorted list!

I can get a little more fancy, too. Here I have a list of first and last names, and I want to sort by last name without having to rearrange the information. Once again, I would highlight the content and click the Sort icon:

I still use the Sort by Paragraphs option, but I click Options… instead of OK:

In the Sort Options dialog box, I replace the single character in the Other box with a space character and then click OK:

That brings up a second Sort Text dialog box, where I can Sort by Word 2. I then click on OK:

Now I have a list that’s sorted by last name!