How can I merge bulleted lists in Word spread across multiple files?
October 24, 2013 2:00 PM Subscribe
Is there a software tool or script for Word (2003 or 2010) that will allow me to combine bulleted lists spread out over multiple files, such that the sub-bullets with the same parent all show up together in one file?
My supervisor requests that I write up a summary on a monthly basis that showcases projects that I have been working on. This takes the form of a bulleted list (with sub-bullets) in Word with pictures and text, one file for each month. That then gets combined with similar documents that my co-workers have written and fed up the chain to show what the team has been working on.
What I want to do is take each top bullet and merge all of its sub-bullets from each separate file, in order to have a year-end summary for myself. This also might have the benefit of making my supervisor's job less tedious when making his summary.
Googling for variations on "combine word bulleted lists from different files" hasn't been helpful as most results are about mail merge, or just formatting bullets a particular way.
I'm not proficient in VBA, but did once work a kludgy script out in ruby using its OLE Automation interface for a different program (SigmaPlot) several years ago to automate a bunch of repeated graphs I had to make. I could possibly make use of that as well, if someone pointed me in the right direction. Using the built in help I see that there is a "Lists" collection and a "List" object, maybe iterating through that in each file?
My supervisor requests that I write up a summary on a monthly basis that showcases projects that I have been working on. This takes the form of a bulleted list (with sub-bullets) in Word with pictures and text, one file for each month. That then gets combined with similar documents that my co-workers have written and fed up the chain to show what the team has been working on.
What I want to do is take each top bullet and merge all of its sub-bullets from each separate file, in order to have a year-end summary for myself. This also might have the benefit of making my supervisor's job less tedious when making his summary.
Googling for variations on "combine word bulleted lists from different files" hasn't been helpful as most results are about mail merge, or just formatting bullets a particular way.
I'm not proficient in VBA, but did once work a kludgy script out in ruby using its OLE Automation interface for a different program (SigmaPlot) several years ago to automate a bunch of repeated graphs I had to make. I could possibly make use of that as well, if someone pointed me in the right direction. Using the built in help I see that there is a "Lists" collection and a "List" object, maybe iterating through that in each file?
'Master documents' is the feature that will let you combine multiple documents, unfortunately in Word it is super bug ridden and has been that way since the feature was introduced in about 1995.
posted by Lanark at 7:41 AM on October 25, 2013
posted by Lanark at 7:41 AM on October 25, 2013
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posted by number9dream at 3:31 PM on October 24, 2013