Script of the Month: Smart Sort

This article appeared in Issue 147 of InDesign Magazine.

Sorting text and tables is a task that InDesign users are regularly called upon to perform. No matter how jumbled the manuscript is, it’s our job to put everything in its right place.

Jeff Potter described several sorting solutions in Issue #143, including Smart Sort from InDiscripts. As Jeff noted, Smart Sort has powerful features for preserving text formatting, detecting language, and sorting numbers correctly. It can also take into account multiple levels of paragraph styles, punctuation, and case. It can even shuffle paragraphs if you need to take them out of a certain order. Plus, it has the unbeatable virtue of being free. As if all that weren’t enough, the latest version of Smart Sort now offers the ability to sort table rows with speed and ease. 

Using the script is incredibly easy. When you run it, a new Smart Sort command appears in InDesign’s Type menu.

Select one or more text frames (or any threaded frame in a story), and choose Type > Smart Sort. 

The script’s dialog box houses a host of settings and a live preview of the results they’ll give you. A PDF user guide provides in-depth explanations of all the features Smart Sort has to offer.

The Smart Sort dialog box

Before and after sorting with Smart Sort

You can download Smart Sort at InDiscripts.com. While you’re there, visit the Products page to see other amazing offerings like IndyFont and IndexMatic.