How do I sort by secod in Vista Word?

[frustratedwithVista-Word]

I have a list of names, first name and last names, but I want to sort them by
last names, which is the second word on each line (paragraph). How do I do
it?
The older version of the SORT command allows for this, but Vista doesn't
show this option.
Please help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Does the sort dialog still have an Options... button? If so, click that and
for "Separate fields at" choose "Other" and type a space. You should then
(if you cross your fingers and hold your mouth just right) get Word 1 and
Word 2 as sort options.

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

"frustratedwithVista-Word"

 

[frustratedwithVista-Word]

Suzanne, ... thank you.
Now why didn't Word F1 help tell me this? I do have a follow-up question:
may be you have an answer also.
Okay, so if I have a list (not in table format) but a long string of text
of names. Example: "Adam Smith, John Paul, Ron Jones, Cathy Murphy, ..."
Is there a command that I can have them "sorted" by last names and still
have them stay as a string in the text?

=================

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The only way I know of to do this is to pull them out, sort them, and put
them back in. The way I would do it is as follows:

1. Copy the string.

2. Paste into a new blank document.

3. Replace ", " (that is comma and space, without the quotation marks) with
^p (paragraph mark). This will give you each name in a separate paragraph.

4. Sort the names.

5. Replace ^p with comma+space.

6. Copy and paste back into the document.

This takes longer to describe than to do, but it still might be faster to
rearrange the names manually unless there are quite a lot, but I have
encountered situations where there was a long paragraph full of names in
which this procedure was quite useful.

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

"frustratedwithVista-Word"