Free Text Sorter

Standard dictionary order. Uppercase letters sort before lowercase unless 'Ignore case' is enabled. Punctuation and symbols sort based on Unicode values.

Reverse dictionary order. Useful for descending lists or when you want most recent/important items first based on name.

Extracts numbers from each line and sorts by numeric value. 'Item 10' comes after 'Item 2'. Non-numeric lines fall back to alphabetical sorting.

Sorts by character count. Shortest lines first (ascending) or longest first (descending). Helpful for organizing by complexity or finding outliers.

Fisher-Yates algorithm for true random permutation. Each item has equal chance of any position. Different result each time unless same random seed.

When disabled, 'Apple' and 'apple' are equal. When enabled, uppercase sorts before lowercase: 'Apple' comes before 'apple' in A-Z order.

How does this text sorter work?

Paste your text with one item per line. The tool instantly sorts lines alphabetically (A-Z or Z-A), numerically, by length, or randomly shuffles them. You can remove duplicates, trim whitespace, ignore case, and handle empty lines. All processing happens in your browser — nothing is sent to a server.

What's the difference between alphabetical and numerical sorting?

Alphabetical sorting arranges text based on letter order (A comes before B). Numerical sorting extracts numbers from each line and sorts by numeric value (2 comes before 10). If a line contains no numbers, it falls back to alphabetical sorting. For pure number lists, numerical sorting is more accurate.

How do I remove duplicates while sorting?

Enable the 'Remove duplicates' toggle. The tool will keep only the first occurrence of each unique line. You can also enable 'Ignore case' to treat 'Apple' and 'apple' as duplicates. Empty lines can be kept, removed, or grouped separately using the 'Empty Lines' option.

Can I sort by line length?

Yes. Select 'Line Length' in the 'Sort By' dropdown. The tool will sort lines from shortest to longest (ascending) or longest to shortest (descending). This is useful for organizing lists by complexity or finding the longest/shortest items.

How does random shuffling work?

Random shuffle uses the Fisher-Yates algorithm to randomly reorder your lines. Each run produces a different random order. This is perfect for randomizing lists, creating random teams, or shuffling quiz questions.

What happens to empty lines?

You can choose: 'Keep in place' preserves empty lines where they are, 'Remove all' deletes them, or 'Group at end' moves all empty lines to the bottom (or top if sorting descending). This helps clean up messy lists while maintaining structure if needed.

Does the sorter work with large lists?

Yes. The tool handles thousands of lines efficiently since all processing happens in your browser. Performance depends on your device, but typical lists (under 10,000 lines) sort instantly. For very large lists, consider breaking them into smaller chunks.

Can I sort CSV or tabular data?

Yes, but you'll need to sort by a specific column manually. Paste your CSV data, then use another tool to extract the column you want to sort by. For simple comma-separated lists, the sorter works directly on each line as a whole.