Iterative / sequential find and replace

[paulkaye]

Hi,
I frequently have lists, each entry of the list is a one-sentence paragraph ending in a full-stop (period), and is prefixed by a non-sequential number or letter or combination, followed by a full-stop and then a tab. So, it might look like this (tabs are shown as arrows, for clarity):

1.→People like to help in online forums.
1a.→Hopefully they will be able to help this time.
x.→I'll be a little stuck without some help with this.

The reason that the prefix is non-sequential and unpredictable is that the order of the list is shuffled about a lot during editing, and for reasons I can't explain here, I cannot use MS Word's autonumbering feature. Once the list has been finalized, I have to renumber the entries sequentially, like this:

1.→People like to help in online forums.
2.→Hopefully they will be able to help this time.
3.→I'll be a little stuck without some help with this.

Can anyone suggest how to do this? The lists are consistent enough that I think it should be possible to find "^p*.^t", but (assuming this is correct), I don't know how to get the replace bit to work the way I want. Any help would be most appreciated!


Thanks,
Paul