Locating and removing large, duplicate blocks of copy in word

[markaffleck]

BACKGROUND
I'm a writer and am constantly moving copy all over my laptop. Over the years, I've used extra caution to not lose content and have ended up with the same copy in multiple docs and folders. I need to get it down to one master doc. To that end, I collapsed all the files into one massive word doc--150 plus pages. I can see the duplicate copy blocks everywhere.

QUESTION
Is there an way to sort it out and avoid having to tediously go through every paragrapa?

[macropod]

One way would be to convert the document to a table, with rows separated by the paragraph breaks, then sort the table. You could then convert the table back to text. Sorted this way, you will have all the paragraphs that start the same grouped together until the first character difference. Do note, though, there is a limit to how many characters Word will use for a table sort (~32 IIRC).

[markaffleck]

Thanks so much! Will give it a try. Mark