Sort Text – Alphabetize Any List

Paste or type your list in the left box and the sorted version appears on the right straight away. There is no button to press: change any setting and the result updates. Each item goes on its own line by default, but commas, semicolons, tabs, spaces or any other separator work too.

This is the quickest way to alphabetize list online without opening a spreadsheet. Pick A → Z, Z → A, Natural, Numbers, Shortest first, Longest first, By last word, By column, Random or Reverse order under Sort by. Then tidy the result: trim spaces, remove empty lines and duplicates, add numbers or bullets, or group items under their first letters.

Everything happens in your browser, so you can alphabetize list after list without uploading anything. The page works the same on phones, tablets and computers.

Sort by offers ten ways to order a list. Most people only need A → Z, but the others save a lot of manual work when a list holds numbers, names, file names or table rows.

Z → A gives you reverse alphabetical order: the same comparison as A → Z, turned upside down. Reverse order is something else. It does not compare anything, it simply flips the list so the last line comes first, which is handy for a log or a list that is already in date order.

Alphabetical order is not the same everywhere. In Swedish, å, ä and ö come after z; in German, ä sorts with a; in Spanish, ñ has its own place after n. A plain computer sort compares character codes, which puts every capital before every small letter and pushes accented letters to the end. That is rarely what you want.

Under Alphabet rules, the first choice is Your browser's language. You can also pick English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese (pinyin), Chinese (stroke), Japanese, Korean, Thai or Vietnamese. The page then uses the browser's built-in collation for that language to sort list alphabetically the way a dictionary in that language would.

Lists of people are usually written first name first but sorted by surname. Choose By last word under Sort by and the page compares the last word of each line first, then the words before it. Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Alan Turing become Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing.

That is how to alphabetize list by last name in one step, without splitting names into columns. People with the same surname are then ordered by first name, and the language, case and accent settings still apply.

A few names need care. A suffix such as Jr. or III is the last word, so it decides the place. Surnames with a particle, such as van Gogh or de la Cruz, are sorted by the final word. If your list is already written as Surname, First name, use A → Z instead, because the surname comes first. For an export where first and last names sit in separate columns, use By column and pick the surname column.

Names are the most common thing people sort, and they arrive in messy forms: extra spaces, blank lines from a copy-paste, the same person twice, a mix of capitals and small letters. To alphabetize list of names from a sign-up sheet or a class register, keep Trim spaces and Remove empty lines ticked, add Remove duplicates, and leave Case-sensitive off.

Book, film and band titles are different. Tick Ignore “The”, “A”, “An” at the start so The Hobbit files under H and A Tale of Two Cities under T. The full title is kept in the result; only the comparison skips the word. Ignore punctuation and symbols works the same way and helps with titles that start with a quote mark or a number sign.

To alphabetize list entries that mix letters and digits, such as product codes, use Natural, so ITEM-9 comes before ITEM-10.

Not every list comes one item per line. Tags, keywords and ingredients are often written as a comma list, and sometimes you want to sort words alphabetically inside a single sentence. Under Items are separated by, choose New lines, Commas, Semicolons, Tabs, Spaces or Other, and type your own separator for Other, such as a pipe |.

With Spaces, every run of spaces or line breaks splits items, so a paragraph becomes a list of words. Punctuation stays attached to its word, so tick Ignore punctuation and symbols to keep a word followed by a comma in its proper place.

Output joined by decides how the result is written: the same separator as the input, or new lines, commas, semicolons, tabs or spaces. Commas and semicolons get a space after them. That makes it easy to turn a column of words into one comma-separated line, or a comma list into one item per line.

Some lists are not about letters at all. To sort text lines that start with or contain numbers, choose between two modes. Natural keeps normal text order but reads digits as whole numbers, so Chapter 2 comes before Chapter 10. Numbers looks only at the first number in each line, including decimals and minus signs, ignores thousands commas, and puts lines without a number at the end.

Shortest first and Longest first order items by their number of characters. That helps you find the shortest usernames or the longest product titles, or solve word puzzles. Items of the same length are put in A → Z order.

By column treats each line as a row. Enter the column number and the separator, for example column 2 and a comma for a CSV file. Numbers in that column sort naturally, so prices and IDs come out in the right order, and the whole line moves, not just the cell. Data copied from a spreadsheet is separated by tabs: paste a tab character into the separator box, or save the sheet as CSV and load it with Open TXT or CSV.

Random shuffles the list, which is handy for drawing names, setting a quiz order or picking teams. Press Shuffle again for a new order.

Once you alphabetize list items in the right order, the Clean up and number card turns the result into something you can paste straight into a document. Under Numbering, choose None, 1., 1), • or - to put a number or a bullet in front of every line. Numbering always follows the final order.

Group under first letters (A, B, C…) appears when you alphabetize list a to z, Z to A or with Natural. It writes each starting letter on its own line, followed by the items that begin with it, with a blank line between groups, like an index or a glossary. Accented first letters join their plain letter, items that start with a digit go under 0–9, and the article and punctuation settings decide which letter counts as first. With groups on, numbering starts again in each group.

Remove duplicates keeps the first copy of each item and drops the rest, and the count above the result shows how many were removed. With ignore case ticked, Apple and apple count as the same item. Spaces at the ends are ignored when comparing.

Word processors and spreadsheets can sort too, and if your list already lives there, that may be quickest. In Word, select the lines and use the Sort button on the Home tab, choosing Text and Ascending or Descending. In Excel, select the column and use Sort A to Z or Sort Z to A on the Data tab. In Google Sheets, select the range and use Data, then Sort range, or a formula such as =SORT(A2:A100).

Those programs sort cells and paragraphs. They are less handy for a comma list, a list in a chat message, names that need sorting by the last word, or a quick list on a phone. To sort alphabetically online here, you paste, read the result and copy it, with duplicates, numbering and language rules handled in the same place.

There is no account, no sign-up and no limit on how often you use it. You can alphabetize list free of charge as often as you like, from a handful of names to many thousands of lines; very long lists just take a moment longer on slower devices.

The sorting runs in this page with your browser's own language rules. Your list is not uploaded, logged or put in the address bar. Only your choices, such as the sort mode, separator and checkboxes, are remembered in this browser's local storage, so the page opens the way you left it. The text you paste is never stored, and files opened with Open TXT or CSV are read on your device.

Need the list in capitals, title case or lower case before you sort it? The Case Converter changes that in one step. The Word Counter tells you how many words and characters your list holds, and the Diff Checker shows what changed between the original and the sorted version, line by line.

Working with data files? CSV to JSON and JSON to CSV convert between the two formats, and CSV to PDF turns a sorted table into a document you can print or share.