Document Merging Nightmare

April 22, 2009 7:26 AM

Help me merge documents with multiple reviewers in Word without losing my head!

Okay, I admit it: the myriad of document merging options in Word (2003) is giving me a headache. Here's what I need to do:

I've been fact-checking a large document, using track changes where necessary to change facts. The original author has been adding material to a version of the document which doesn't include my fact checking changes. How do I incorporate his new text without losing my fact checks or (worse) having them revert back to the old, wrong stats?

Thanks everybody.

posted by l33tpolicywonk to computers & internet (1 comment total)

1) make copies of the versions you're working with, including the version of the document that existed before you or the author made changes, if possible.
2) copy those copies to somewhere safe that's not in your working directory where you work out how you want to do this.
3) Use the Tools->Compare and Merge Documents... command to do the following:
- Merge a copy of the original document with your changes and make sure you captured all the changes you made. Identify a few key changes you made and note them somewhere else.
- Merge a copy of the original document with the author's changes and note similar key changes.
- Merge a copy of your changed document with a copy of the author's changed document and look in that document for signs of the key changes you noted earlier from your changes and the author's changes.
4) Now that you have copies of the various originals, work with the merged copy of your changes and the author's changes. The different authorial sources should be highlighted in different colors with Track Changes enabled. Watch out - some of your changes or the author's changes may have been deleted, so look both at deleted material and at added/changed material.
posted by kalessin at 7:52 AM on April 22