Easily Reorganize Your Word Document by Sorting Paragraphs by Number
When you are writing a long research paper or article, chances are you will have to rearrange some paragraphs during the editing process. Word has an easy way to do this: number the paragraphs and then sort them numerically.
Editing my research papers in college was always a challenge because I rearranged my paragraphs by copying and pasting them, but then I inevitably forgot where they went or lost my place in the document. Before I know about it, an entire section of my article will be disorganized. The numbering of these paragraphs is fairly straightforward, and as How-To Geek explains, you can use Word’s “sort by number” feature and your document will be automatically reordered:
Determine which paragraphs you want to reorder. Then enter the number “1” as the first character (then enter a space) of the paragraph, which should be the first in the changed order. Enter the appropriate numbers as the first characters (with a space after each number) of all paragraphs you want to reorder, similar to creating a numbered list.
NOTE. When you add numbers to the beginning of paragraphs, Word can convert the paragraphs to a numbered list. If adding a number to the beginning converts a paragraph to a numbered list, press Ctrl + Z to undo the conversion. Your number will remain as you entered it. Also, if you want to sort more than nine paragraphs, make sure you add a leading “0” to your numbers (01, 02, 03, etc.).
From there, just select all of the text, then go to Paragraph> Sort Text> Sort By and select Number. Your paragraphs automatically change in the order you specify.
If you are a Google Docs user, there is no sorting function, but the Doc Tools add-in will give you this option. Check out the full post for more details.
How to Easily Change the Order of Paragraphs in a Word Document | How-To Geek