I have an interesting problem.


I am working with a person with limited physical abilities. There are 45-50 documents that have been created, each in a separate file, using many different formats, as they were produced over a long period.


They need to be converted to all share a common page size, margin set, basic font, line space, etc.



I have been opening each one, making all the needed adjustments to page size, margins, font, etc., and saving each.


The desire is that they all be consistent as to those styling features (the page-size change is vital, as is the margin change, many already use the right font.)


I have not been able to create a "style" or other tool that will allow me to open each, apply, and save.


Is this possible? (These are NOT new files. I know could probably do something like opening a "new" file with the right setup, copy, paste, save as...etc. Although I am not sure I would get the needed margin changes, etc. if I did that.) I am an "experienced amateur" with Word...but this challenge has evaded me.


Thanks for any help.




jp

Try recording a macro that performs your changes.
Run it on a backup of one of the files you need to change and see how it works.


If I were faced with this, I would create a template that had the characteristics I wanted, create new documents based on that template, and copy and paste from the old. That would be far from perfect but would be a good start.


Why does this person need the old documents reformatted. The purpose of templates is production of new documents, not using old documents. Are they journals of some sort?

The person, with limited physical abilities, has spent years writing poetry and stories. Wants to publish as a book, but publisher requires formatting to be "as to be printed", and charges extra to do re-entry and formatting. We will do it, even if it takes longer.

That explains the reformatting of old documents.


Reformatting is easy if original formatting was done using styles.
Again create a template for a document formatted the way you want.
Create new documents based on the template and copy content from the old into the new.
Use the macro you recorded on each new one.
This will give you a good start.

Presumably, your publisher will also want all these poems and stories in a single document. In that case, probably the best approach would be to create such a document with the required page layout, then simply copy & paste the content from each of the existing documents into the new one, pasting as unformatted text in the desired order. You can re-apply the required paragraph formatting via the appropriate use of Styles. It's up to you whether you do all the copying/pasting first, then apply the Styles, or copy/paste a single document, then apply the Styles before copying/pasting the next document. Either way, with only 40-50 documents to process, the task shouldn't be too onerous. If you use Word's heading Styles for the titles, Word can also use those to build a Table of Contents at the front of the combined document.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks, you've given me some ideas to try. Will do some "tests" and proceed.


jp