Tech Tip #221: Sorting Out Your Tables in MS Word 2007

As educators it seems that our life is made up of lists.  We have to keep track of books, hardware, students, lunch money, assignments, dogs, cats...you get the point!  It also happens that we often have a desk piled with scribbled notes and returned forms which we need to compile and submit to someone as soon as possible.

I can't help you with never requiring lists again, but I can help you with sorting out your information if you collect it in tables.  Depending on the task, I may set up information in Excel and use that to keep track of items which I may "mine for data" later on; however, more often then not, most lists are simple one time only items.  For these, I stick with MS Word and create a table.

Here I made a table where I am keeping track of some computer hardware.  In the end I would love to have a list with all the like components listed together (eg all the printers).  In the "olden" days I would have spent hours inserting rows above and below items and visually sorting through the info.  But I don't have to do that any more.  I can just add everything to my list in whatever order I wish.

(PS. If you wish to find out how to make it look "all fancy" refer to the previous tech tips #143 and #144.)

At any time I can resort this info quite quickly.  All I need to do is click somewhere in the table and then choose LAYOUT from the TABLE TOOLS option which appears on the MS Office Ribbon at the top of the screen.  From there I choose SORT (see below).  It's fairly easy to make your choices.  In this case, I chose Item (to lump all the like items together), then the make (to lump all the similar makes together within an item) and then the Serial Number.  Your choices will change as you name the header cells in your table.

Click on OK and immediately your table is organized in the way you wish.  See how mine changed below.  What is nice is that you can keep adding and then sorting as required.  No need to insert cells and move and delete items to get them in the right order.