Combining Word Documents

Summary: At some point you may want to insert one Word document inside another Word document. An easy way to do this is to use the INCLUDETEXT field, described in this tip. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

Word provides a very easy way to combine documents, without the typical cut-and-paste routine. This is great for boilerplate text in your document. All you need to do is use the INCLUDETEXT field within a document. Follow these steps:

Insert a pair of field braces by pressing Ctrl+F9.
Within the field braces type INCLUDETEXT, followed by a space and the name of the document you want to include. For instance, if I wanted to include MyFile.Doc, I my field would look as follows:

     { INCLUDETEXT "MyFile.Doc" }

Press F9 to update the field.

At the point, the specified file should appear within your document. If it doesn't (for instance, if you get an error message), then make sure you typed the document name correctly, and that you included a full path name. (You must include the full path name if the document is in a directory different from the one in which the current document is located.)

Tip #598 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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