Concatenating Files

[DonH]

I have a directory with about 400 small MS Word files that I would like to concatenate into a single file. How can I do this without having to open each file in Word and manually append it to the document? I tried going to DOS and using the copy command with wild characters (*.doc) but only one file got copied to the output.

Thanks for the help.

Don.

[ileacy]

The syntax for the copy command is:

Copy file1+file2+... newfile

The + is required for concatenation.

You can use wildcards in a batch FOR loop but you probably don't want to. The concatenated files would probably not be a valid WORD document. To properly handle this problem you need to use a WORD VBA macro.

[LegareColeman]

You should probably ask this question in the Word forum. You can not just concatenate the files since Word would not recognize the format of the resulting file. You will need a Word VBA macro to do this and end up with a file that Word can use.

[DonH]

Actually, I found out by looking at some Newsgroup postings that you need to convert the files to text, and then you can easily concatenate them by using a utility called concat/split. (See http://www.jddesign.freeserve.co.uk/concat-s.htm)

Don

[Leif]

But by converting them to text files, aren't you having to open them in Word anyway?
I would have thought a macro to open and insert each file into a single document would be the fastest solution.

[DonH]

No, you don't have to open the documents. Word2000 has a batch conversion wizard. Click on file/new/other documents/batch conversion. It lets you select files and convert them into a variety of other formats, one of which it text. Works great.

[Klaus Linke]

I use the following "no-frills" macro. It makes a new document, and puts all files (*.DOC, *.RTF, *.HTML, *.TXT ...) in the folder (Path1) into it in alphabetical order.
Most of the code was stolen from the Word2000 online help (but any bugs are still mine <img src=/S/wink.gif border=0 alt=wink width=15 height=15>).

<img src=/S/cheers.gif border=0 alt=cheers width=30 height=16> Regards, Klaus


<pre>Sub Accumulator()
'
Path1 = "c:myfolder" ' Set Path.
Documents.Add DocumentType:=wdNewBlankDocument
ChangeFileOpenDirectory Path1

With Application.FileSearch
.NewSearch
.LookIn = Path1
.SearchSubFolders = False
.FileName = "*"
.FileType = msoFileTypeAllFiles
.Execute SortBy:=msoSortByFileName, _
SortOrder:=msoSortOrderAscending

For i = 1 To .FoundFiles.Count
Selection.TypeText .FoundFiles(i)
Selection.TypeParagraph
Selection.InsertFile FileName:=.FoundFiles(i), _
ConfirmConversions:=False
Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak
Next i
End With
End Sub
</pre>