HOW TO SORT TEXT ALPHABETICALLY - pages

One more time, your answer isn't accurate !

When it's correctly installed under Lion, Devon's Word Service behave flawlessly.

Select this piece of text in Pages v4.1 under 10.7.2

Trigger the wanted service item

And the tool which you described as "not active" achiev the wanted task !

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 7 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

Since we're revived this thread, yet again, I'll update if for Pages '13.

Services aren't supported in Pages '13. Nor is Text to Table or Table to Text conversion.

The workflow now would be:

Select the paragraphs to be sorted and Copy.

Insert a 1-column Table and set to 1 column, no header row. Probably best to do this in a fresh document to not mess up any formatting in the original working document.

Select the first table cell and Paste.

Click the menu triangle over the table column and Sort.

Select the entire column and Copy.

Insert a Text Box and Paste and Match Style

Select and Copy the content of the Text Box.

Back in the original working document, where the text to be sorted should be still Selected, Paste and Match Style.

Wasn't that fun?

Jerry

To give you an idea how bad Pages v5 is, consider this.

I created an Apple Service item in Automator. Looks like the following. Can't get much simpler. Works in every text based application except Pages v5, which doesn't even show it as available. Changing selected text to selected rich text made no difference. Sort in this invocation follows the ascii collating sequence. If you want a sort by dictionary order, use sort -d.

From selected text in TextEdit:

Services are exactly that services available to all applications that have the Services menu.

They are really amazingly useful, but are just another brilliant Mac technology that Apple has left largely unexplained.

The additional problem since OSX 10.7 is that rather than just work when you install them, you have to select and check them to be working in the Services, management options.

To compound that, Mavericks has problems with at least some of the Services, particularly the new iWork apps. But then the new iWork apps seem to have problems with just about everything.

TextEdit has been relatively untouched/unharmed by the Mavericks programmers and retains most of what you would expect to work, including Services.

WordSevices has a remarkably long list of text functions, and is the one that includes sorting.

Peter

btw Don't blame us for the confusing naming of the iWork apps. They used to be bundled and named after the year they were released. Apple then split them up and renamed them after the release version which now is Pages v5, Keynote v6 and Numbers v3.

We occassionally call them as a group iWork '13, because there is no other name for the latest set.

Apple isn't here. You have to tell them your view using this link http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html

Thanks JerroldGreen1, that's exactly what I needed.

It shouldn't be that difficult.

I don't know how fruhulda got so many points by being so rude! 😠

And they're wrong: the suggested threads are on the RIGHT. 😁

Please, I am not rude. I am pointing out that the question has been answered before. There are other solutions apart from Jerrolds. Why is it rude to point out the obvious? Is it rude when you don't get the expected answer but another answer?

Yes, they are on the right. I wish they were on the left so I would write wrongly.

It may have been answered dozens of times, but that didn't help macflower 70 or myself to complete the task. Pages may not have the exact feature needed, but the workaround provided by JerroldGreen1 accomplished the same thing in about 30 seconds. If I'd followed fruhulda's advice, I'd have had to manually cut and paste each line myself, taking much longer and being very aggravating.

Therefore, I say that JerroldGreen1 sent the correct answer.

Worked for me! 😎

fruhulda sent the direct and simple (and correct) answer. The suggested workaround is quite complicated, but it presumably works. I am a Nisus user, where such a feature is simple + other features. I would suggest to download Nisus, test it and, perhaps, it is worth having it on your computer for a reasonable licence fee. Mellel also can do that in a simnple way, another wonderful word processor (waiting for v. 3). Etc.

Pages, on the other hand, has other features absent in Mellel or Nisus. Am also looking for the ideal word processor, it has not been created so far.

Jerrold wrote:

> In the Table Inspector, Table tab, Edit Rows and Columns section, Choose Sort Ascending.

Which applies the Unicode Collation Algorithm. It is strange that Apple on the one had promotes system level services and on the other does not document how the application level wires into the system level. Instead, the system level services are seen as an 'expert area' when these services would be better seen as common ground. While in OS X there is some UI for system level services, in iOS there is none. Not sure that is any solution.

/hh

OregonRebel wrote:

It may have been answered dozens of times, but that didn't help macflower 70 or myself to complete the task. Pages may not have the exact feature needed, but the workaround provided by JerroldGreen1 accomplished the same thing in about 30 seconds. If I'd followed fruhulda's advice, I'd have had to manually cut and paste each line myself, taking much longer and being very aggravating.

Therefore, I say that JerroldGreen1 sent the correct answer.

Worked for me! 😎

No, I never suggested copy and paste.😮

If you do a search for alphabetical and order or sorting you'll find quite a few answers, some with Jerrolds suggestion and also with the WordService one.

I was ready to revert to WordService, but I found that it does not seem to work with Lion, says I should reinstall—the service is detected, but not functional.

I wrote to DevonThink Technologies. This function would be particularly useful for apps, which do not include it, as a Nisus and Mellel user did not feel its absence, but seems useful to others.

Yvan, I gave no answer! You must have a perpetual negative reaction when you see my name. I just asked why DevonThink does not work with my Lion.

‘When it's correctly installed under Lion, Devon's Word Service behave flawlessly.’

Good, I created a folder Services in /Library, put it there, logged out, re-logged in. I get the same error.

I have a negative reaction when you give wrong infos.

WordService behave flawlessly when installed correctly on a clean system.

The fact that it doesn't on yours just prove that something is wrong on yours.

I'm not in front of your machine (I have no info about it) but clearly something is wrong on it.

Macintosh HD:Library:Services:WordService.service:

I wish to add that Lion was installed on a blank HD, not upon an existing 10.6.8 system and that I run the apps from the iWork package, not those from Mac App Store.

Don't describe a wrong behavior as a general one before checking that it really strike elsewhere.

Don't worry, I behaved like you in the past. Now, I try to be more cautious.

For instance, when I wrote about an annoying behaviour striking upon dates in my system, I didn't stated that the system was wrong. In fact, it was just corrupted on my machine.

A bit of cleaning and the standard behavior was back.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 7 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My apologies, it was incidental and, perhaps, useful. Sorry for misinterpreting, it was not ill-intentioned.

Secondly, if the problem is similar, I think it is normal to discuss adjacent topics like WordService, it may be useful to you too.