Microsoft Word offers built-in functionality that lets you merge multiple Word documents into a single file. If you are working with different Word files that need to be merged into one final document, this will be a practical option.
How to merge Word documents
The built-in function is partially manual but useful if you want to have full control over how documents should be merged and inserted into the final document. To be quick, be sure to keep the documents in one place. There are two ways to merge multiple Word documents: part of a file or multiple files with or without bookmarks.
1) Merge multiple Word documents (only bookmarked text)
If you only plan to add parts of documents, be sure to add bookmarks in the source document (Insert> Links> Bookmarks). I explained how to manage and create bookmarks at the end. The only drawback is that you will have to insert them one after the other.
- Open the Word document where you need to add the rest of the documents.
- Place the cursor where you want to insert the document.
- Go to the Insert section and click the arrow icon next to Object under Text.
- Select the "File text" menu.
- It will open another window which will allow you to select one or more files.
- You can also define a range (Excel) or a bookmark name (Word) if you only want to import only these sections of the document.
- Click Insert and it will copy the entire document or the marked section to the final document.
- Repeat the process with the other documents you want to merge.
Now that you know how to insert a document, I want to help you understand another concept: bookmarking. This is crucial if you only want to import part of the documents.
- Open the source document, i.e. the one you want to import.
- Select a set of paragraphs that you want to import.
- Then click Insert> Links> Bookmarks.
- Name the bookmark you remember.
Note that if you do not select and mark text, it will not be imported or only the first line will be imported. This is how it works. The image above shows the bookmark "Merge4" and a set of paragraphs is highlighted.
2) Merge multiple Word documents
The integrated tool allows you to select multiple files and import or merge Word documents in bulk. The documents will merge in the same sequence as you chose, so be sure to name or organize the sequence before importing them. If you don't, it will take a long time to rearrange them later.
If you want merge multiple documents at once, but with bookmarks, so here's a pro tip. Use the same name for all bookmarks on all documents. When you use the same name, it will look for the corresponding bookmark in all documents and import them one by one. Again, make sure you select them correctly.
Merging multiple Word documents is easy compared to what we've seen with Excel files. You can choose to import a part or a complete file one after the other.
I hope the message was easy to understand and that you can merge the Word files.
