Notepad Alternative

[Roderunner]

Hi Folks,
I use the version of Notepad that's built-in to Win7. One of the functions I use it for is storing my phone contacts. Unfortunately it won't sort items in alphabetical order. Do you know one that will???

[Rudi]

Hi,

You can use Notepad++
It has a built in sort option.
See sceenshots below...

Before	Sort	After
SC001.jpg	SC002.jpg	SC003.jpg

In addition to Notepad++, (and unless you have MS Office and Excel), you could consider the free open source software called: Apache Open Office 4.1.2. You can use the sreadsheet application in the suite ("Calc") to easily sort and maintain your phone numbers.

[Roderunner]

Hi Rudi,
thanks for your suggestion, but it is not too clever, as it numbers every row, making it unusable.
Here is a sample of how I do it.

Brown George
01695 883377
07931 335577
-
Brown Graham
01695 775533
07776 337755
-
Bush William
01695 775533
07776 337755

All the above are invented and samples only. The first number is for a land line. The second is for a mobile.
Some of my contacts have a home phone only. Others only gave me their mobile number.

[HansV]

I don't think you'll easily find a text editor that can sort data with that layout. Even in Excel it wouldn't be trivial.

I'd store the data in Excel (or its LibreOffice counterpart if you prefer) like this:

S212.png

Easy to maintain, easy to sort.

[Roderunner]

Hi Hans,
thanks for you super suggestion. The reason I asked was, I have 3 separate lists and wanted them in alphabetical order after copy & paste into another copy of notepad so I could make it into a pdf file. It has a search feature where I can input the last three numbers to see if one of my contacts have called my home number when their number is in my cell phone. Both phones have limited storage space address books.
p.s. Neither of my pc's have any office programs.

[Rudi]

Open Office (my link above) and LibreOffice that Hans suggested are completely free, trusted, open source applications. They are Office Suites that contain the typical apps similar to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. The app similar to Excel in the Suite will provide you with much more control over organizing and managing your lists. If I am not mistaken, Open Office can also save the file it generates in PDF format.