Alphabetical List Sort

Scrivener Wish List
1

Hello -

I would like to be able to put a bulleted list in alphabetical order. If there’s a way to do this, I couldn’t find it in the manual or on the website.

Thanks,
Mary Thompson

2

Hi Mary

Welcome. Do you mean a bulleted list in the body of your text? (You can sort items in the Outliner but I assume you don’t mean that.) If so, the answer is no. It’s a task probably better done in a spreadsheet or a word processor table, which you can then copy and paste into Scrivener.

H

3

Since the Mac is running Unix, you can do this in the shell in the Terminal app:

  1. Run the program Terminal.
  2. When you get the $ prompt, type
    sort
  3. Go back to scrivener. Copy the lines that have your unsorted text.
  4. Go back to the Terminal window. Paste.
  5. Type then control-d.
  6. The lines will be sorted. Copy and paste them back into scrivener. Quit the Terminal app.

Fun fact: the acronym bash stands for “Bourne-again shell”.

4

If you don’t want to use Terminal:

  • Go to http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/index.html and download WordService 2.8 from the Freeware section of that page and install it as per the instructions in the ReadMe file in the download package.

  • Highlight the text you want to sort and select ‘Sort Lines Ascending’ or ‘Sort Lines Descending’ from the services menu (to which you can add a short cut if you wish, in the normal way).

You may have to reapply any numbering afterwards. WordService has other useful text manipulation services, such as removing line endings, that you may want to look at as well.

Hope this helps,

David