Excel is a handy tool that I use to sort lists of IP addresses used by spammers.

1) Type or paste your list of IP addresses into a single column within Microsoft Excel;
2) Select the cells that contain IP addresses;

Excel is a handy tool that I use to sort lists of IP addresses used by spammers.  The list can become long and overwhelming.  Rather than wait until spammers strike, I try to be proactive by organizing these IP addresses in ascending order to look for patterns.  This allows me to ban large blocks of IP addresses that future spam will likely originate from.

1) Type or paste your list of IP addresses into a single column within Microsoft Excel (this writeup assumes you use column A);
2) Select the cells that contain IP addresses;
3) Click or select Text to Columns under the Data tab in the menu;
4) Choose ‘Delimited’ as your file type and click Next;
5) Select ‘Other’ as the delimiter and insert a period in the open field, and select Finish (not Next);

That should split each individual IP address into 4 separate columns (columns A through D), allowing you to Sort them by following these steps:
1) Select the 4 columns by clicking on the column header for column A and dragging to select all 4 columns before releasing your mouse button;
2) Click the Data tab in your menu and select ‘Sort’;
3) Here you can choose among a variety of sorting options, including smallest to largest;

After you sorted the IP list of IP addresses, you can use a formula to combine the cells while inserting a period to separate the values:
1) Type the following formula in column E, Row 1:

=A1&”.”&B1&”.”&C1&”.”&D1

2) Double click click the tiny square that appears in the border of the cell in Column E, Row 1, filling the other cells within Column E with this formula;
3) You can always copy Column E and paste values using the paste special function in Excel.