Paste any list – names, words, products – and sort it from A to Z or Z to A. One item per line, sorted in a click, ready to copy.
Our guide covers sorting in spreadsheets and editors as well: How to Sort a List Alphabetically
How to use the Sort a List Alphabetically
- Paste your list into the top box, one item per line.
- Leave Ignore case ticked for ordinary lists. Tick Remove duplicates after sorting as well if repeated lines should come out.
- Press Sort A → Z for alphabetical order, or Sort Z → A for reverse order.
- Read the sorted list in the bottom box. The line above it confirms how many lines were sorted, and which way.
- Press Copy result to take the list away, or Clear to start again.
What the results mean
Sort A → Z arranges the lines from A to Z, the order of a dictionary or a class register: Apple before Kiwi, Kiwi before Mango. Sort Z → A is the exact reverse, running from Z down to A, which suits lists you work through from the bottom up.
Ignore case starts ticked. It tells the tool to treat capitals and small letters as the same while sorting, so “banana” sits between “Apple” and “Cherry”, where a reader would look for it. Untick it and the tool uses plain character order, in which capitals come before small letters — so “Zebra” lands before “apple”. That looks wrong in an ordinary list, which is why the box starts ticked.
Remove duplicates after sorting starts unticked. Tick it and, once the list is sorted, repeated lines are removed and the first of each is kept. With Ignore case ticked as well, “Apple” and “apple” count as the same line for this clean-up.
The status line reports what happened, for example: “3 lines sorted A → Z.”
Worked example
Paste these three lines into the top box, in this order:
Mango
Apple
Kiwi
Leave Ignore case ticked and press Sort A → Z. The result is:
Apple
Kiwi
Mango
The status line reads: “3 lines sorted A → Z.” Press Sort Z → A instead and the same three lines come back as Mango, Kiwi, Apple — the same list turned upside down.
Common mistakes
- Sorting numbers and expecting number order. This tool sorts text, so “10” comes before “2”: it reads the first character, not the value. If a numbered list must sort neatly, pad the numbers first — 02, 10, 25.
- Leaving a blank line in the list. A blank line sorts to the very top in A → Z and leaves an odd gap at the head of your result. Delete blank lines before you sort.
- Unticking Ignore case, then thinking the tool is broken. Capitals-first ordering is a real ordering, just rarely the one people want. Tick the box and sort again.
- Expecting duplicates to vanish on their own. They stay, side by side after sorting, unless you tick Remove duplicates after sorting.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Does sorting change the words on each line?
No. Each line moves as a whole unit. Its capitals, spelling and spaces come out exactly as they went in; only the order of the lines changes.
Q: Can I sort a list of full names by surname?
Not directly. The tool reads each line from its first character, so “John Smith” sorts under J. For surname order, write the names surname-first — “Smith, John” — before you paste the list in.
Q: What happens to lines that start with numbers?
They are sorted by their digits, as text, and they land before the letters. So “10 items” comes before “2 items”, and both come before “Apples”.