Following your tip on alphabetising by surname in Microsoft Word (Issue 640, page 47), here’s how I alphabetise text that’s in a table in Word. For my job as a part-time tutor, I often have to sort the second, third or fourth columns alphabetically.
First, I select the text, then click the top-left Home button and select the A-Z ‘Sort’ button (1 in our screenshot) to bring up the Sort box. My tables always have headings, so I make sure ‘Header row’ is selected at the bottom 2. This ensures that the ‘Sort by’ dropdown menu shows my table’s headings – in this case that’s Country, Population, Capital, Population 3. If I wanted to alphabetise by Country, which is the first column, I select that in the ‘Sort by’ menu, then…