Here’s a working Microsoft Excel 2007 .xlsx file (11kb) that has a simple formula to split a word list according to the case of each word’s starting letter. For instance, you have a list that runs…
Frodo
Merry
Pippin
riders
Gandalf
Sam
ponies
Strider
mushrooms
You want to remove all the words that do not start with a capital letter, since they are not likely to be personal names or place-names or species etc. Excel can’t do this ‘out of the box’, at least not with the various Sort buttons available in Excel 2007. Nor can plugins like ASAP Utilities. This spreadsheet results in a list with the all-lowercase words pushed down to the bottom of the sorted list, thus…
Frodo
Merry
Pippin
Gandalf
Sam
Strider
ponies
riders
mushrooms
It won’t work properly if you also have words in your list with a capital letter after the first letter, such as “naZgul”. Those words will be flagged as if they start with a capital letter. Numbers, on the other hand, are fine.
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