merging docs in Excel?

December 11, 2007 7:17 AM

How to merge two docs in Excel?

I'm working on a list of information, and a friend is working on the same list. We both do a little work every day and want to create one master document that contains all our research. At the moment we have it in Excel. How can we merge our info frequently so that we each have the latest version at hand all the time? We're in different countries, so email is our primary means of communication.

posted by Ollie to computers & internet (7 comments total)

My suggestion is to use Google Docs. You can both work in the same spreadsheet at the same time, chat, see which cell the other is editing and such.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:24 AM on December 11, 2007

Thanks. Stupid question: does one have to be online to work? My friend is in the middle of nowhere and can get to an internet cafe maybe once a day, sometimes once a week. Can she work in an Excel file and then just paste her changes and get mine when she gets to a cafe?
posted by Ollie at 7:33 AM on December 11, 2007

How to Merge Workbooks in Excel
posted by willnot at 8:03 AM on December 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

willnot: does this work if you are emailing the doc back and forth, or only if you are on the same network?
posted by Ollie at 8:18 AM on December 11, 2007

Ollie, looks like willnot's link will work via e-mail. I don't see any reason you have to be on the same network. After Step 9 (Save as different file names) you should be able to e-mail the copy to your friend the way you normally would.
posted by desjardins at 10:09 AM on December 11, 2007

Yeah, you should be able to e-mail it. The hassle is that you're going to need to keep merging the workbooks, saving a new copy again and sending that off if the changes are going to be ongoing, but it should work for you.
posted by willnot at 10:54 AM on December 11, 2007

Going forward, you can use Office Live to keep the Excel documents sync'ed. MS just opened up testing this week.
posted by junesix at 5:24 PM on December 11, 2007