Hi have a slightly unique question, and i have searched all over to see if something is possible in word or Excel (it seems it needs a combination of both).



I want to create a list of details that i will then copy and paste into emails for work.

e.g.

Heading
(bullet point) some info here
(bullet point) some info

Now, although that's easy to do, i also need the ability to sort the data that i put in alphabetically by the name of the heading (and nothing else). I would use Excel, but you can add bullets to text, and its more difficult to type in lines without moving to the next cell by hitting the return key.

Word is great for the way it looks, but even putting it in a table and asking it to sort by heading doesn't work.

Any ideas at all??

Well, depending on how many lines you are working with, you could

1. remove the bullets, put it in Excel, sort, return to Word and replace the bullets (bullet removal/restoration easy if you use styles);

2. use Word's Outline view and sort the headings manually

Nothing else comes to mind at the moment. The issue is keeping the bullets with their respective headings during the sort. I was trying to think of a way to put each heading and its bullets in a single paragraph and sort that way. I guess you could, if you changed from returns to tabs all the line returns from the end of the heading to the one just before the last bullet of each list, then sorted the paragraphs, then reversed the return-to-tab replacement.

Best,
Ulodesk

There are normally 4-5 lines underneath the heading.

I think perhaps the manual outline way will be the one. There doesnt seem to be another way. Word doesn't seem to recognise the heading of each section and therefore does not sort the automatically for me.

Its a bit of a pain... Even using a table doesnt seem to work.

As an alternative is there any way in word to have a different page (like in excel) for each letter of the alphabet. That would make sorting a bit easier, just to have the info on different pages, but still easily accessible.

Without seeing your original, my guess is that sorting a table would work as long as you put the headings in one column and the bullet points in another. You might need to be creative with your e-mail formatting, depending how much gets carries across when you copy/paste from Word. As for adding bullets (but not list indents) in Excel, try left Alt + 0149 (numeric keypad).