I need to sort a column of text in the Pages program on my Mac, but can’t figure out how to do so. Is it possible?
For reasons that only Apple can answer, there are some features related to tables and sorting that have been removed from the most recent versions of the popular Pages alternative to Microsoft Word. Now you can’t convert a column of text to a one-column table and you can’t sort non-tabular data in the program. I guess we’re supposed to just type things in alphabetically!
Seriously, though, there is a way to sort a column of text, but it involves some fiddling and it’s tricky to get the data back to be just a column of text rather than be locked into the table formatting unit. But it’s doable.
To start, I’ll create a column of unsorted textual data, in this case related to Alice in Wonderland:
The first step is to select all the text in the column with a click-drag-release gesture. The selected text will be your highlight color (mine is blue):
Now, with that in the copy/paste buffer click on a spot in your document where you can work or even pop open a new document for this task, then choose Insert > Table > Plain to add a basic table:
The table is added, and it’s pretty big, but don’t worry, we’ll get rid of it in a second.
The table’s rather attractive:
Now click on the top left cell (A1) and paste the list of words you’ve copied, either with the Cmd-V key sequence or with Edit > Paste.
The result is that the first column will be filled with these values, and the table will actually increase in size as needed too:
Almost done.
Now click on the “V” symbol just to the right of the column label “A” to produce the menu of options:
Choose “Sort Ascending” and it’ll instantly sort all the values in alphabet order, A-Z. Now again select the fields and Edit > Copy to put that into the copy/paste buffer. Now you can delete the entire table and paste the set of sorted values to create a neat looking mini-table:
Or if you really, really want to get just text, use the “Paste and Match Style” option from the “Edit” menu and you’re good to go.
Way lots of work, no question. More work than it should be, for sure!