Find and Replace

[Guest]

I was just sent a list of names and addresses. Each line after the name and
after the address is followed by a paragraph mark. Each entry (name and
address) is separated by two paragraph marks. It needs to be alphabetized
according to last name.

I know how to alphabetize the names according to last name only in Find and
Replace, but how can I get just the names in a single table or column? Any
suggestions about how to do this more quickly than I am currently able to
would be appreciated.

Thanks for all you do.

 

[Guest]

Are you talking about converting text to table format? If so, select the
text and go to Table | Convert. There you can select "Text to Table"... it
will bring up a box that will ask how many columns you want, etc. You can
also convert a table to text so if you alphabetize it as a table, you can
convert it back to text.

Good luck!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Start by grouping each address block into a single paragraph. Do that by
replacing paragraph breaks (^p) with line breaks (^l). Then replace two line
breaks (^l^l) with a paragraph break (^p). At this point, if each name
consists of just a first name and a last name, you can sort the list by Word
2. If there are titles, middle names or initials, or other complications,
some hand tweaking will be required.

If you want to convert this information to a mail merge data source, then
you can start by converting the text to a table. Replace each line break
with a tab (^t), then Table | Convert | Text to Table separating at tabs.
That will give you a row for each record and a column for each line of the
address block. You'll probably want to break it down further, especially to
be able to sort on last name. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/SplitFirstNameLastName.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Guest]

Thanks, Suzanne. This will get me through the season!