Alphabetizing / excluding the word "the"

[Dani_Oliver]

Hey there. I’d like to alphabetize one set of records in a table but would like to write a formula that would exclude the word “the” at the beginning when alphabetizing. (I rather not just format as Title, The.) Any possible way to do this, or no, because this is essentially a sorting issue, not a formula/record-naming issue?

[Nick_Dennis · Accepted solution]

The way you are describing, with a formula to strip “The” from the beginning, should work well. The formula would look something like SUBSTITUTE({Book Title}, "The ", "")

Note the capitalization and space after "The ". This should help ensure it only removes capitalized versions of the word (although it doesn’t really matter since it’s a hidden field), and the space makes sure it doesn’t leave an empty space at the start of the string after removing the word.

Then you would just sort your table by this new field, and then you can hide it if you want. The original Book Title field should still be your primary (first) field.

[SarahRoss411]

How would you write this formula to work to exclude two articles? For example, excluding "The" and "A" from records when sorting alphabetically.