sort by last word in a field

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sort by last word in a field

Anonymous

In Word 2007, is it possible to sort a list by the last word in the field (when all parts of the name are in just one field)? I'm trying to sort a list of names that look like this:

Mr. Joe Smith

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Baker

Mrs. Mary Ann Jones

Dr. and Mrs. William T. Miller

Thanks!

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Anonymous

The functions required for this are not available in Word (see Use a formula in a Word table: Available functions). However, they are native to Excel, so you could move your list there, perform the desired actions and copy the results back to your Word list/table.

Open Excel to a blank worksheet and copy your list of names to column A.
Place the following formula in B1 and copy or fill down as necessary:

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",REPT(" ",99)),99))

This should result in something like the following,

3. Highlight the entire range of data (e.g. A1:B4 in this example) and Select Data then Sort from the Sort & Filter group. 4. Change the Column, Sort by to Column B and click OK in the lower right.

The result should look like this,

5. Copy column A back to your Word list/table.

If you have more columns of information than just the names, bring those along with the names to Excel and adjust the column references in the example as necessary.

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Answer 1

Anonymous

Thank you so much for such a quick (and easy to understand) answer! It worked like a charm. And the finished product was supposed to be in Excel anyway so it worked out perfectly.

Thanks again!

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sort by last word in a field

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