is there a way to having the programming tweaked for the "Friends" list?

in trying to familiarise myself to this feature, i noticed that if i wanted to assign "numbers" to people, that when you "update" the page, it only will apply to that specific page.

for example, let's say that i wish to alphabetize my list and i have 10 pages of friends.  if i have friends whose name begins with A on pages 4, 6, 7, and 8, right now i go to page 4, change that person's number to #1 and hit "update".  then i have to go to page 6 and put a #2 next to the next person and then hit the "update" button.  this is a very clumsy & time-consuming way of updating, and i'm wondering if there could be a way to go through all the pages, assign numbers and then hit "update" to process the whole lot instead of page by page?

thanks!