I'm in the final stages of preparing a book to send for printing, and need to merge the three separate MS Word files in which I've written all the chapters, into one file. I opened the first file, put the cursor at the end of the file and went to Insert -> Objects -> Text from file -> selected second file. The second file was inserted perfectly at the end of the first file. All fonts and font sizes from the original second file were properly maintained.



I then again put the cursor at the end of this file and went to Insert -> Objects -> Text from file -> selected third file. The third file was inserted at the end of the file, but all the fonts were converted to Arial 11. None of the fonts in any of my three files are Arial.

I do not understand why the first file merge worked perfectly, but the second merge is scrapping all the fonts and font sizes from my original third file and changing everything to Arial 11. I tried just doing a traditional copy-paste of the third file into the main file, but it still changes everything to Arial 11. How can I prevent this and get the merge to maintain my original fonts?

Evidently, your documents aren't all using the same Style definitions; or someone has overridden them with direct formatting. The cure is to ensure all the documents use the same Style definitions and that they're used consistently and without direct formatting.

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

I have had to do a lot of direct formatting throughout due to the fact that there are two different languages, each having their own font and font size. All the English words are in Times New Roman size 12, and all the Hindi words are in Nirmala size 11. And there are many sentences that contain Hindi and English words. Furthermore, the line spacing is different for English and Hindi paragraphs. I had tried to set up the font differences via styles using Latin and Complex Font settings. But MS Word did not follow along i.e. did not set the Hindi in the font and font size I had requested, so I had to do it myself directly. It did not seem like MS Word is used to working with multiple languages having different alphabets in the same document.

So I do not think there was any way to set up all the special needs of this project using styles.

Be that as it may, the second document merged perfectly well into the first. And the third document has all the same direct formatting which the first two files have. Short of using styles - which I do not think is possible here -- What would be the way to get the fonts maintained in the second file merge just as they were in the first?

Styles are at the heart of every Word document, regardless of whether you're using them correctly.

When working with different languages, one might have one paragraph Style for, say, the English text, and another for the Hindi text. Where both languages are required in the same paragraph, one might type these up in separate paragraphs, then apply a Style separator to join them visually; alternatively, one might supplement the paragraph Styles with character Styles (e.g. one name 'English', the other 'Hindi'), using the paragraph Style for the dominate language in a given paragraph and the character Style for the other language.

If you upload two documents, one containing content from your 'first' or 'second' file, and another containing the problematic content from your 'third' file, it may be possible someone here to remedy the issue via Style redefinition or a different approach to combining the content.

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

I concur with everything that Paul has said.


You can examine settings in your documents using Shift+F1 and clicking the checkbox at the bottom about Style source.
Word's Reveal Formatting Methods



If in one document, there is a style format and in the other a direct format, that can be the source of your problems. Word will normally use the style definitions already in use in the destination document.

The settings that I have established system wide are the page size, margin sizes, and first line indent. The line spacing within paragraphs is set at the default of 1.15, but each and every Hindi paragraph I have reset to 1.25 spacing by direct formatting. Then there is the punctuation: all the punctuation (comma, single inverted comma, double inverted comma, parenthesis, square bracket, question mark) had to be set via direct formatting for all the Hindi text as the default characters in that Nirmala font were not proper. Other factors in that font were good, which was the reason for its selection. This is all in addition to the font type and size difference already mentioned. I do not think there will be a way to systematize these differences via styles especially given the degree of mixed language paragraphs.

The footnotes also required directed formatting which could not be done via styles as for example the number in the text reference and the number below in the footnote are by default the same font and size and by my online search there was not a way to set them as different.

All told there is a huge, huge amount of direct formatting in this book which has taken thousands of hours and it is not going to be amenable to system wide settings via styles.

If you think that by my uploading some paragraphs some solution may be achieved, then I can do that.

All three documents have the exact same style settings, as well as the same (tremendous amount of) direct formatting.

I wasn't sure how you would want me to prepare the two documents. The first document consists of file 1 and file 2 combined; what I did was to copy content from the end of that document. That is attached here with the name "Part 1 end". File 3 is the file which is getting ruined when I try to merge it into the first document. I copied the first few paragraphs from file 3 and pasted it into a document called "Part 2 beginning".

I create a third document just now to give you a sample of what happens when I try to merge the "part 2 beginning" into the end of "part 1 end". As you can see, the formatting of all the punctuation-- square brackets, commas, parentheses etc is ruined. But that is only the beginning of the problem. In the full document, the text itself is also malformatted by being change into Arial font-- all of it -- Hindi and English.

Let me know if this is sufficient for you to check it out.

Attached Files

	Part 1 end.docx (13.7 KB, 10 views)
	Part 2 beginning.docx (16.2 KB, 9 views)
	Part 1 with Part 2 merged into it..docx (18.3 KB, 8 views)

On the contrary, Normal Style, for example, in:
• 'Part 1' is defined as 24pt Arial with a 0.5in 1st line indent.
• 'Part 2' is defined as 12pt Times Sanskrit with 0 1st line indent.
Changing the Normal Style's font in the 'Part 1' to 12pt Times Sanskrit should resolve the font issues.

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

I tested your suggestion with the two sample documents which I had uploaded here for you, and it worked. However when I implemented it in my actual document 'Part 1', it created a problem so I had to reverse it ctrl-z to move back to how it was before.

Although when I copied the last couple paras of 'Part 1' and made a new document for this forum 'Part 1 end', the Normal style in this newly created 'Part 1 end' was 24 pt Arial it is true, but the full document 'part 1' from which those last couple paras were copied has a Normal style of 11 pt Arial. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are actually three files which I want to combine. The first two I merged together without incident, to create what is now 'Part 1'. But now I have gone back to the original files which got merged to create 'Part 1', and I see that of the two files, file one has a Normal style of 11 pt Arial, and file two has a Normal style of 24 pt Arial. When I merged file two into the end of file 1, the 'Part 1' thus created took on the attributes of file one, i.e. 11 pt Arial. Even though the two files had different Normal styles, but the merger of file two into the end of file one worked perfectly with no disruption of fonts. When I copied the last couple of paras from 'Part 1' to create a new document for this forum 'Part 1 end', this document inherited the Normal style from file two (24 pt Arial) even though the overall 'Part 1' style is 11 pt Arial.

Anyhow the problem I am facing now is that when I open 'Part 1' with its Normal style of 11 pt Arial, and change that to 12 pt Times Sanskrit, it changes the size of all the Hindi words in the document from 11 pt Nirmala to 12 pt Nirmala. Currently all the English words in 'Part 1' are 12 pt Times Sanskrit, and all the Hindi words are 11 pt Nirmala. It has to be kept that way, as Nirmala font is by nature bigger than Times Sanskrit and so to maintain sameness of size between English and Hindi words, the pt differential is critically important.

Given this problem that the Hindi words are getting changed from 11 pt Nirmala to 12 pt Nirmala when I change the Normal style form 11 pt Arial to 12 pt Sanskrit, what would you recommend I do as a solution. If some such simple setting change could make the 3rd file merger into the end of 'Part 1' successful, it would really be great!

There is no simple setting to fix botched documents.


You could save these as pdf and combine the pdf file in Acrobat.

Is there a way to go into 'Part 1' and at the very end, where the merger of file three is to occur, set the Normal setting there as 12 pt Times Sanskrit? That is, the Normal style will remain as it is for the whole 'Part 1', and then at the very end where the cursor is set to indicate the place of merger of file three set the Normal style as 12 pt Times Sanskrit there. Or if not "Normal style", then create a special or custom style to commence at that location with 12 pt Times Sanskrit. If I can create such a style and have it be in effect at that location at the end of the 'Part 1', then it will receive the file 3 merger without affecting the fonts in file 3. (Such a new style coming into effect there would not affect the fonts in the rest of 'Part 1'.)

No, there is but one setting for any given style in a single Word document. You could, perhaps, change the content to be inserted so that it is using a different style.

Sure, got it so I couldn't create a second "Normal style" within a single document. But can I create a new custom style, say, called "new" (having the attributes of file 3 i.e. 12 pt Times Sanskrit), and could I bring that style into effect at the very site at the end of 'Part 1' where I've created a new page section break for merger?

Another workaround would be to save each of the documents in the RTF format, open them in Word Pad, make a minor edit to each one & save it, then re-open the RTF file in Word. That typically wipes out all Style info in the edited documents, effectively leaving everything in the vanilla 'Normal' Style.

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