Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Combining Word Documents.

Combining Word Documents

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 22, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

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.)

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (598) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Combining Word Documents.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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