How to combine Word documents into one, and keep the formatting

If you have Word on a computer, the cleanest way to combine documents is built in: open the first document, click where the next one should go, and choose Insert > Object > Text from File. Pick one or more files and Word drops their contents in at the cursor, formatting included. If you don't have desktop Word, or you just want to drag files into order and get one .docx back, Merge Word Documents does it in your browser without uploading anything.

Both routes are fast. The difference is what each one keeps, and that is where most merges go wrong.

Option 1: In Microsoft Word

1. Open the document you want at the start. Save a copy first, so you have the original if the merge goes badly.
2. Put the cursor at the very end. If each document should start on its own page, press Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac) to add a page break.
3. Go to Insert, open the small arrow next to Object and choose Text from File.
4. Select the next file. To insert several at once, hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) and click them; Word inserts them in the order they are listed in the dialog, which is usually alphabetical, so rename them 01, 02, 03 if order matters.
5. Scroll through the result before you save, paying attention to the first page of each inserted document.

Word for the web does not have Text from File. There, the only built-in option is opening each file, selecting everything and pasting it in, which works for short documents but gets tedious past three or four.

Option 2: In your browser

1. Open Merge Word Documents and add your files. It takes .docx, older .doc and .rtf, up to 30 at a time.
2. Drag them into the order you want.
3. Leave Start each document on a new page on if the parts are separate chapters, reports or submissions. Turn it off to run them together as one continuous text.
4. Click Merge and download merged.docx.

The files are read and combined on your own device, which matters when the documents are contracts, medical letters or HR files you would rather not hand to an upload site.

What "keeping the formatting" really means

A Word document has two layers of formatting, and they behave differently when you combine files.

• Content formatting: headings, bold, italic, underline, bulleted and numbered lists, tables, links and pictures. Both methods above keep these.
• Page and style formatting: the font family and size, colors, margins, headers and footers, page numbering and custom styles. This is where merges break, because one document can only have one set of each unless you add section breaks.

In desktop Word, Text from File keeps most of both layers, with one big catch. When two documents both use a style with the same name, such as Normal or Heading 1, the document you are inserting into wins. If your first file uses 12 pt Times New Roman for Normal and the second uses 11 pt Calibri, the second file's text switches to Times New Roman as soon as it lands. Usually that is what you want, since the result looks consistent. If it isn't, change the styles in the second file to different names before merging.

Our browser tool rebuilds the document from its content. Headings, emphasis, lists, tables, links and images carry over, and everything is set in one clean default font. Original fonts, colors, margins, headers and footers are not copied, and from older .doc and .rtf files you get the text and paragraphs only. That makes it a good fit for pulling sections from several people into one draft, and a poor fit for a finished, carefully designed document. For those, use Word.

Common mistakes

• Losing headers and page numbers. If each part needs its own header, insert a section break (Layout > Breaks > Next Page) before each one, then turn off Link to Previous in the header. Without the section break, the whole document shares one header.
• Numbered lists that continue across files. A list that ended at 7 in one file can carry on as 8, 9, 10 in the next. Right-click the first item and choose Restart at 1.
• Files in the wrong order. Number the file names before you start. It saves a lot of cutting and pasting afterward.
• Mixing tracked changes. Accept or reject changes in each file first. Merged documents with several people's revisions are hard to untangle.
• Old .doc files. If a file is in the old .doc format, convert it with DOC to DOCX or re-save it in Word first, so you can check what came through before it ends up in the middle of a long merge.

When to combine as PDFs instead

If nobody needs to edit the result, and you just need one file to send or upload, converting each document to PDF and merging those keeps every page exactly as it looked, headers and fonts included. Convert with Word to PDF (or File > Save As > PDF in Word for a pixel-perfect copy), then combine them with Merge PDF. Our guide to merging PDF files in the right order covers that part step by step.

The rule of thumb: merge as Word when the result is still a draft, and merge as PDF when it is finished.