Ok, while your waiting for someone to come up with a programme or addin answer these are the steps that I would take if tackled with your issue.

I'm assuming that you have probably 21 labels on a sheet, or hopefully it's on lever arch labels which are far less! If not and the assumption is right that is 29,400 different entries. I can see why you have dread.

First thing I would do would be to save the document as a different document so you still have the original.

Secondly I would clear all the formatting on the Home Tab, Font Group then Clear Formatting (looks like a little eraser), so everything is just your normal font unformatted.

Then I would, on the keyboard press Ctrl F, which brings up the navigation box and choose from there Find and Replace.

Assuming your boss has used spaces for alignment, I'd probably start with by putting 10 spaces in the find dialog section to and 1 space in the replace section and repeat this with a reducing amount, i.e. 9 spaces to 1, 8 spaces to 1. Has your boss used punctuation? If so I'd be inclined to remove this by the find and replace method so there is no punctuation in the document whatsoever. If there are blank lines within each cell I would also use Find and Replace to get rid of extra paragraphs (blank lines), say ^p^p (paragraph mark code) to ^p to get rid of blank lines, repeat this again if you think there might be more blank lines in the labels.

Once you have done this I would then save the document with a different name so you can "go back".

Assuming there is no header rows in these tables (which is what a label document is). Clicking within the table should show you Table Tools on the Ribbon, choices are Design and Layout, Choose Layout, under the Data Group choose Convert to Text, I’d choose Other and use | (Shift+ \), then Find and Replace to replace the paragraph marks (shift 6 and p - ^p) to commas so each “label” should be look something like this:

Word, word, word, word, word, word, word, word|

I would then Find and Replace the | mark with a paragraph mark ^p and save the document.
Select all the text in the document (Ctrl+A), copy (Ctrl+C) and in a blank Excel Document paste it (Ctrl+P) – starting at cell A2.

In Excel, on Data Tab, choose Data Tools group and choose Text to Columns using the Delimited option of a comma.

In row A add your headings. Insert a few columns for your “various types of supplementary information appears sporadically” Unfortunately you will have to cut and paste the sporadic information to the correct places. Save the spreadsheet.

Under the Data Tab there are filter and sort options. Using these it might make your mammoth task seem a little less daunting, by doing it in sections.

How your boss found anything information is surprising!!

Good luck

You could unload your original document and I can have a look for you as it is always easier to see what you are trying to achieve seeing the raw data. If you wish I will get it to the Excel Stage

Julie Willis