How does Sort My List clean up or extract email addresses?

Updated

Sort My List handles email addresses with two separate tools: one cleans an existing email list (fixing typos, dropping bad, duplicate and throwaway addresses), and one extracts every address out of messy text. Related tools sort emails by domain, remove one list from another, and find near matches. All processing happens in your browser — the site states your list is never uploaded.

What each email tool does

Tool What it does Use it when
Clean an email list Fixes typos, drops bad, duplicate and throwaway addresses You have a list you already collected and want it usable
Extract email addresses Pulls every address out of messy text Addresses are buried in prose, signatures, or mixed content
Sort emails by domain Groups addresses by company or provider You want to see which domains dominate or split a list by provider
Remove one list from another Takes unsubscribes and bounces off a mailing list You have a suppression list to subtract from your send list
Find near matches Spots near-duplicates like jon.smith@ and jonsmith@ You suspect the same person appears twice in slightly different forms
Merge CSV files Combines contact exports from several sources You are consolidating exports before cleaning

How to clean an email list

  1. Open the "Clean an email list" tool from the All list tools page.
  2. Paste your addresses into the editor. The tool auto-detects how items are separated, or you can set the separator yourself (new lines, commas, semicolons, tabs, spaces, pipes).
  3. Run the clean action. Expected result: typos corrected, and bad, duplicate and throwaway addresses dropped.
  4. Review the output, then copy it to the clipboard or download it as a .txt file.

Verification: check that the count of addresses went down only by the number you expected to lose, and spot-check a few corrected entries.

Common snag: if your list uses an unusual separator (for example, addresses pasted from a spreadsheet with trailing tabs), set the separator manually rather than trusting auto-detection.

How to extract email addresses from text

  1. Open "Extract email addresses."
  2. Paste the messy text — email bodies, signatures, documents — into the editor.
  3. Run the extraction. Expected result: a clean list containing only the addresses found in the text.
  4. Choose your output separator (same options as input) and copy or download.

This is the tool to reach for when addresses are embedded in prose rather than already listed one per line.

Sorting and de-duplicating by domain

To group addresses by company or provider, use "Sort emails by domain." To catch duplicates that differ only slightly, run "Find near matches" — it surfaces pairs like jon.smith@ and jonsmith@ so you can decide which to keep. For a mailing list with unsubscribes or bounces, "Remove one list from another" subtracts the suppression list from your send list.

Practical notes

  • The editor also offers general cleanup that applies to any list, including email lists: trim spaces, remove extra whitespace, remove punctuation and symbols, change case, and find and replace.
  • Undo and redo are available, so you can test a cleanup step and reverse it.
  • Your list follows you from tool to tool within the browser session, and it stays in your browser the whole time.
  • The site describes itself as free since 2008; the page shows an advertisement, and a "subscribe" signal appears in the site data, so treat any premium features as something to check on the site rather than assume.

If your goal is simply to alphabetize names rather than process addresses, the same editor's sort options (A → Z, by last name, and so on) cover that on the main Sort My List page.