How to use the List Sorter
Sort your list in three steps:
1
Paste your list
Paste any list — one item per line, or comma, semicolon, pipe, or tab separated. The delimiter selector lets you specify the format.
2
Choose sort mode and options
Select A–Z, Z–A, 0→9, 9→0, Shortest first, or Longest first. Toggle case-sensitive, remove duplicates, trim items, and skip empty as needed.
3
Copy the sorted list
Click Sort List and copy or download the sorted output in the same delimiter format as your input.
When to use this tool
Use to sort any list of items into a consistent order:
- →Alphabetising a list of country names, product names, or team member names for a document or table
- →Sorting a comma-separated list of values exported from a spreadsheet before comparison or deduplication
- →Ordering a list of CSS class names, import statements, or configuration keys alphabetically for code style consistency
- →Numerically sorting a list of IDs, invoice numbers, or version strings to find the highest or lowest value
- →Sorting items by length to identify the longest or shortest entries in a data set for quality review
- →Combining sort with duplicate removal to produce a clean, unique, alphabetically ordered list in a single operation
Frequently asked questions
Q:What delimiter formats are supported?
Six delimiter formats are supported: New Line (one item per line), Comma, Semicolon, Pipe (|), Tab, and Custom (any string you type). The output uses the same delimiter as the input, so a comma-separated input produces comma-separated sorted output — no reformatting needed.
Q:How does numeric sort differ from alphabetical sort?
Alphabetical sort compares items as strings, producing the order 1, 10, 100, 2, 20 because '1' < '10' < '100' < '2' in string comparison. Numeric sort parses the leading number in each item and compares numerically, correctly producing 1, 2, 10, 20, 100. Items that do not start with a number are placed at the end of the numerically sorted output.
Q:Can I sort and remove duplicates at the same time?
Yes — enable the 'Remove duplicates' toggle before clicking Sort. Deduplication respects the case sensitivity setting: with case-insensitive mode, 'Apple' and 'apple' are treated as duplicates and only the first occurrence is kept. The result is a clean, unique, ordered list produced in one step.
Q:Is sorting case-sensitive by default?
No — sorting is case-insensitive by default, which means 'apple', 'Apple', and 'APPLE' sort together as if they were the same word, following natural alphabetical order. Enable 'Case sensitive' to sort by raw character codes, which places all uppercase letters before all lowercase letters (Z sorts before a in ASCII order).
Q:Can I sort a comma-separated list from a spreadsheet?
Yes — copy a comma-separated range from your spreadsheet, paste it into the input, select the Comma delimiter, choose your sort mode, and click Sort. The output is the sorted comma-separated string ready to paste back. For newline-separated lists, paste a copied column directly without changing the delimiter setting.
Q:Is there a limit on how many items can be sorted?
No enforced limit. JavaScript's built-in Array.sort() (Timsort, O(n log n)) handles lists of tens of thousands of items in milliseconds. All processing runs in your browser with no server round-trip. Very large lists with millions of items may take a few seconds to render.