Bullet points alphabetical order LibreOffice

[timvg]

Hi there. I am wondering if anyone could help with a sorting problem that I am having with LibreOffice writer. I am trying to do a little glossary for my current work, and I am putting the definitions into bullet points. I can put this into alphabetical order without any problem by using Tools - Sort. However, in a couple of cases I have some sub-bullet points, and I want these to remain in those positions, under their main bullet point, but they are also being moved by the Sort.

Is it possible to set it so that sub-bullet points aren’t affected? Failing that, is it possible to group them all together so that they are treated as a single unit?

[oweng]

I know of no way to do this. Sorting is either according to row (lines of text) or column (delimited / separated values). Lines are treated as separate units by most sorting algorithms. The newline character is a natural delimiter in this respect. If your data has common groupings (e.g., every N lines is a group) then certain sort utilities have a key option that allow specifying of this aspect. What you require is a more complex semantic sort that can recognise sub-points in a list and keep them semantically in position. No such facility of either type exists within LO at this time.