Changing Paragraph Order

Summary: Reordering paragraphs is a common task when editing a document. You can use cut and paste to move them around, or you can use Word's sorting capabilities, as described in this tip. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

Most writing is an iterative adventure. When writing a document of any length, you will find that you write it once, making changes as you go, and then you will probably rewrite it over and over again until you get it just the way you want.

If you find that there are several consecutive paragraphs in your document that you want to reorder, you can apply this tip:

Put a number as the first character in each paragraph. The number should represent the final order in which you want to the paragraphs to appear. Thus, the first paragraph would be 1, the paragraph you want next would be 2, and so on.
Select all the paragraphs you want to reorder.
Choose the Sort (or Sort Text) option from the Table menu. You will see the Sort Text dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
Make sure you are sorting by Paragraph and that the sort type is Number.
Click on OK.
Remove the numbers from the front of each paragraph.

Note that you can also use the outline view of a document to reorder your paragraphs, but sometimes this can be a bit too much trouble. The foregoing steps are quick and easy for most people.

Tip #1074 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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Changing Paragraph Order