Collating Word documents?

[ArcticStones]

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Does anyone know if there is an elegant way to collate Word documents, i.e. merge them into one?

Sure, I know I can copy and paste, but there must be a better way. I probably have more than 50 documents containing translated text for a certain project. I would like to merge them, because it will be a lot easer to do Quality Control – checking for consistency of terminology, etc etc.

Appreciate any tips.

– ArcticStones

[tlarkin]

in office 2k3 > word 2k3 there is an option under tools called "compare and merge documents"

No idea what it does, no idea how well it works, just stumbled upon it once for a user who had a similiar problem

I would start there and see what that does, but make sure you got back ups first

[hayne]

You could probably automate this using AppleScript.

And if you are on Tiger, the command-line tool 'textutil' might provide a way to automate this via a shell script.
if you search the main macosxhints site for "textutil" you will find at least one article about it.

[ArcticStones]

in office 2k3 > word 2k3 there is an option under tools called "compare and merge documents"
Compare Documents is a nifty function that shows the differences between two documents – for instance if a client has revised an original when I’m halfway through a translation, and not bothered to mark the changes.

I’ll check out Merge Documents and let you know the results.
Thx.

[styrafome]

Another angle to explore is the Master Document feature where you use a Word document to refer to a number of other Word documents, like a book full of chapters.

[JDV]

You can also use the "include" feature, which is essentially the same as creating a Master Document. You simply add an "include" field with a path to the document to be merged. The advantage to this sort of approach is that any subsequent changes you make to the other documents will be reflected in the Master document (when you update the fields).

Joe VanZandt

[ArcticStones]

Another angle to explore is the Master Document feature where you use a Word document to refer to a number of other Word documents, like a book full of chapters.
As far as I can tell, this achieves exactly what I want. Choosing to view a primary document as a Master Document, then repeatedly using Insert Subdocument, will establish one ****-document. I can then check this for any deviation in terminology, etc. (And for the particular translation job in question, it will ease my price calculation considerably.)

Thank you very much!

:)


<JDV, I couldn’t find the Include feature...>

[JDV]

That may be antiquated information. I used it when preparing my dissertation, but the concept of Master document and Subdocuments wasn't part of Word at that point. It looks like they've taken the "include" field and made it into a different feature. Glad you were able to achieve the results you wanted!

Joe VanZandt