Merge 2 Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents into 1

If you’re anything like me, you may find yourself producing documents that undergo extensive reviewing processes. It’s slow, frustrating and often ends up with a piece of work full of silly mistakes.

Thankfully, technology has finally caught up and brought us Microsoft Office Word 2007. If you’re given the job of collating the final version of a document after three people have made changes to it, it used to be the case that you’d have several documents open at once as you inched through them trying to spot each change. Now, however, the tri-pane review panel means it’s easy to compare and combine two versions of an Office Word 2007 document.

1. Two's Company

Some colleagues have edited a document and you need to put those changes into the original. Go to the Review tab and select the Compare ➜ Combine revisions from multiple authors into a single document.

2. First Version

A new dialogue box will appear. Under Original Document, click on the name of the document into which you wish to combine the changes. If you can’t find it then click on Browse for Original to run a search.

3. Copycat

Once you’ve found the original document, look under Revised document and browse for the document that has the changes from your colleagues. When you’ve found it, click on the More button.

4. Compare and Contrast

You’ll be presented with a range of options of what Word 2007 can compare. Under Show Changes you can say which of these comparisons you’d like Word to run, or even all of them.

5. Seeing Double

Still under Show Changes, click on Original document and then OK. If you want to change which documents appear on screen, choose between Hide Source Documents or Show Source Documents

6. Consistency

When merging multiple documents you have to choose which formatting you want to keep (if it’s been altered during the editing process). If you don’t need to track formatting changes then clear the Formatting check box.

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