Thanks for the reply. Your method seems close to what I want, but there are a
few problems.

When I only select the first column, I do not have the option to merge
cells. That command is greyed out. I must select the entire rows before merge
is an option.

Also, I sometimes have several levels of indentation. For example:

Book
1976
War and Peace
Moby Dick
1977
Star Wars

Ideally, the sublevels would be sorted as well. I am beginning to think that
I am asking too much for the built-in Word functions. Maybe there is a way to
do this programmatically?

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

To keep the related items together, they must be in the *same* row. In
your example, Book and Moby Dick have to be in the same cell.

You can prepare this by selecting a group of related items in the
first column and clicking Table Merge Cells. Then select the
matching group of cells in the second column and merge them (you can
just press F4 to repeat the action). Do this for each group of related
items.

After you sort, if you feel you need to return to separate rows, you
can do it with the Table Split Cell command. Unfortunately it won't
be as easy as the merge, since Word's default is to split the entry
into more columns in the same row, rather than more rows in the same
column. You'll have to change the settings in the Split dialog each
time.