How to Merge Multiple Word Documents into One
Microsoft Word helps you make your work easier. Consider a situation where you have to compile a few different Microsoft Word documents together to make one single Word document. You don’t need to access online websites for making this compilation because Microsoft Word offers you this amazing tool where you can compile all the files for Word and make one single file for all of them.
Why Would Anyone Want to Compile Word Files and Not Make a Single File Right From the Beginning
Whether you are a student or a working person, requirements for the clients, universities and even for yourself keep changing with time. For instance, it is possible that you made each chapter for your thesis in a different Microsoft Word files that you could keep a clear count of words in each chapter. And now because you need to compile it, you find the copy and pasting too tiresome. Instead, you can use this tool on Microsoft Word which will hardly take a few minutes to compile more than one files. You will save time here, which you would have been wasting is you copied and paste chapter by chapter. Here is how you can merge your Word files on Microsoft Word, just follow the steps as mentioned below.
- Open your Word Document. Now it is not mandatory that you open your file to one of the Word files that you want to compile the rest with. In my suggestion, it is best if you open an entirely new blank document so that none of your Word documents are changed in any way.
Initially, I left the document empty, but later I added my name on the topmost line so that you can notice the difference when I merge this file with the rest of the files. - From the top tools panel, you need to click on the tab for ‘Insert’. This is where you will find the tab which can be used to merge more than one Word files and make them one single file.
Insert: As the name suggests, this is where you can ‘insert’ content on your Word document that you are currently working on. - Towards the right end of this panel under Insert, find the tab for ‘Object’ as shown in the image below. You need to click on the downward facing arrow attached to this tab so that you can access the dropdown list of options for your document.
Object>Text From File. The second step here after you click on the downward facing arrow is to click the tab for ‘Text from file’. - Clicking on the downward facing arrow for the object will show you the dropdown list as shown in the image above. From this list, click on the second tab which says ‘Text From File…’. This tab will now open an extended box for you showing you all the documents on your computer which you can choose from. The purpose of this tab, ‘Text from file…’ helps you take the text from files on the computer and adds it automatically to your current document. While you must be aware that when you copy the text from other files through this tab, you are only copying the ‘text’. None of the formatting is copied, which means you might need to do the formatting all over again.
Select a number of documents which you want to compile together into one single document. Simply press the Shift or Ctrl key from the keyboard and click on the documents to select them all. If you want to select all the files in a certain folder, press shift key with the letter A, this will select all the files in that folder. - After choosing all the files that you want to merge, you need to click on the Insert tab as shown in the image.
Clicking on this Insert Tab will insert all the content from the files you have just selected on this open document which you are working on. Be sure of the files you want to merge. Carefully click on the documents which you want to merge, because there are chances of human error, you might select an extra file which wasn’t needed here in the first place. - I chose three Word documents to be merged together with this fourth one which I opened initially. Now it is not important that the fourth file has been one of the files you want to merge. As mentioned earlier, I used an empty file, and even if you choose to use an already filled document, that is also acceptable. This is how your Word document will look like, after being merged with three other files (which is my case, you can add even more files to merge).
All three files in one place.Easier for you to print them, easier for you to submit your work.
