Merge documents while preserving endnotes

Question

Hi everyone:

I have a book manuscript written in Word 2010 in which each chapter is a separate Word file. I want to merge all these documents together into one huge file, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it and keep the endnotes as they are at the end of each chapter -- going from 1 to whatever and then, in the next chapter, starting over again with 1 and going to whatever. Neither cutting and pasting, nor using the Insert function, seems to gives me what I need -- either the endnotes don't import into the larger document I'm trying to create, or they all show up together at the end of the merged documents and renumber themselves in the text accordingly, and so I end up with one big document with dozens of endnotes all at the end.

At the same time, it would be best if the page numbers to NOT start over again with "1" at the start of each chapter. They need to keep going from 1 to whatever the last page of the whole manuscript is. Is this do-able? Perhaps I just need to manually change the page numbers?

I thought perhaps putting in a page break at the end of a chapter before pasting/inserting the next document in would work, but I can't seem to put a page break AFTER the chapter's endnotes. Word won't let me do that. It will let me put a page break at the end of the main text, but that's not what I need.

Any help here? Thanks!

Answer 1

Insert a section page break between each chapter in the combined document. Then you can right-click an endnote and click Note Options on the context menu. In the dialog box, choose "End of section" in the "Endnotes" box. Make sure that "Apply changes to" is set to "Whole document," and click Apply.

Answer 2

To open the Insert File dialog box in Word 2010: On the Insert tab, click the arrow on the Object button, and then click Text from File. Locate the file you want to insert and click its icon. Click the arrow on the Insert button and choose the Insert as Link option.

Note that INCLUDETEXT fields do not update automatically; you will have to select the whole document and press F9 to update them. Note that you can also change content in the file containing an INCLUDETEXT field and then save the changes back to the original file by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F7.

Answer 3

Very helpful, thanks. Is it possible through Word also to subdivide a Master Document into chapters while retaining the endnotes and footnotes relevant to each chapter? I understand I have first to convert the endnote text to ordinary text, but how do I do that and retain the note indicators (though the notes can begin at #1 in each chapter)?

Answer 4

I'm glad I could help.

Answer 5

Thank you, Stefan!