Lists help all of us stay in touch and better manage our lives. There are shopping lists, to-do lists, brainstorming lists, and more. Depending on how connected people are with their devices, we often make these lists on our smartphones or PCs.
However, when lists get so large that they become difficult to manage, they can become a serious productivity killer. Trimming and cleaning up lists is important, but also organizing them as they grow. Alphabetical or other sorting of lists is a small investment of time and can save you much more time in the future.
In this article, we’ll take a look at five sites that will enable readers to organize and sort lists of text on the Internet.
alphabet
Alphabetizer is our pick as the best overall solution for sorting and organizing lists on the Internet. The website is easy to navigate, offers many options, and can be used in two different flavors: an updated version or an older version that some users may prefer.
Alphabetizer supports the following sorting and filtering options:
- Alphabetize.
- Sort by last name.
- Sort headings alphabetically.
- Make lowercase letters.
- Use capital letters.
- Remove duplicates.
- Reverse list.
- Remove HTML.
- Stir.
It also supports more advanced operations like numbering each line by number or roman numeral, adding separators, adding any character (s) to the beginning or end of each line, deleting words, and more.
Using Alphabetizer, lists can be alphabetized locally without saving data, or users can save lists to a URL to share with others.
WordCounte
As the name suggests, WordCounter was not originally created as a site for sorting and organizing lists, but it does offer a great tool for creating an alphabet.
The ability to ignore specific or undefined articles is one of the features that sets WordCounter alphabetically apart from other sites. The site also allows users to process lists based on various delimiters such as newlines, commas, spaces, or any custom character.
In addition, WordCounter supports the following sorting and filtering options:
- Alphabetize.
- Arrange the list by category.
- Sort alphabetically by last name.
- Remove duplicates.
- Reverse.
- Arbitrary.
- Remove the HTML.
- Add numbers / letters.
- Add your own text.
- Change the type of the list.
- Ignore first / second / third / fourth word.
If any of these options seem confusing, WordCounter will explain each one perfectly at the bottom of the linked page.
EduBirdie
EduBirdie is a writing platform with a little-known alphabet composing tool that is actually quite powerful. It’s clean, concise, and contains most of the features of the other sites on this list, as well as a few that are unique.
The EduBirdie alphabetical index allows users to select the sort type: A – Z, Z – A or by last name, and the formatting of input and output: space, line feed, comma, semicolon, or any custom separator.
EduBirdie also has a set of delete options that allow users to remove duplicates, punctuation, parentheses, HTML, or articles from lists.
SortMyList
SortMyList is a breath of fresh air when compared to other sites on this list. The site is designed in a retro style, with a user interface that resembles something like a desktop application from the days of Windows XP
Using Comic Sans MS is also an interesting addition, but don’t judge the book by its cover: SortMyList is a very powerful online sorting and alphabet tool.
SortMyList offers advanced alphabet options, allowing users to sort from A to Z with special recognition of names, addresses, headers, emails, HREF, etc. Uniquely, SortMyList can also sort by day of the week and month if such text is found.
And finally, sorting by length is something that almost all other online sorting tools don’t account for, but SortMyList supports it.
As for other features, there are menu items for changing the case of letters – where users can convert lists to lower case, upper case, random case, heading case, or capital letters – and clear lists, such as removing all line breaks, trimming spaces, removing spaces , remove non-alphanumeric characters, remove duplicates, and more.
Despite its unusual design, SortMyList is definitely versatile and useful when it comes to sorting, filtering, and ordering lists.
Gillmeiser program
Gillmeister Software’s online sorting tool is short and handy. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the other sites on this list, but it gets the job done if all users want a quick and easy way to sort their lists.
The only suggested sorting options are alphabetical and “natural,” which evaluates the value of the numbers contained in each line. List data must be sorted by newlines, and users can sort ascending or descending, respecting or ignoring case.
Sometimes less is more, and for users who are just looking for a quick and easy way to sort a list in the simplest ways, this tool from Gillmeister Software is great.
Spending a few seconds sorting a list using one of the above tools can save users a long journey of annoyance and wasted time down the road. Leave us a comment below if you have any questions or comments on any of the sites featured in this article.
–