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General discussion

Update one document through another in Word

Oct 14, 2005 3:33PM PDT

My problem is such: I have a complex word document with a series of numbered lists. I have another document onto which I need to transfer only these lists, however, there's a catch. I need the second document, the "just lists" document, to automatically update when I change the lists in the primary document. If anyone knows how to do this, please help! Thank you in advance, your attention is appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Solution...
Oct 15, 2005 4:00AM PDT

Microsoft Office 2000/XP/2003 supports a feature called Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), which allows you to do exactly that.

* Open the original/primary document, select the data to be duplicated, and select ''copy.''
* Open the secondary document, and select ''Paste Special'' from the ''Edit'' menu.
* Select ''HTML Format'' and ''Paste Link,'' then click ''OK.''
* Save the secondary document.

There are a few things I'd like to note from experience, though:

1) When you change and save the primary document, the secondary document will not be immediately and automatically updated. Instead, opening the secondary document will always prompt the user if he/she wants to update the document based upon changes to the primary document (even if no changes have been made). While this should be fine, there are two catches:
* If the secondary document cannot access the primary document at the time of being opened, no 'updates' can be made. This may be a problem if they aren't both stored locally or the user doesn't have access to the primary document.
* If someone besides yourself loads the document, he/she will have the choice of updating or not...something you may not want others to have to option of.

2) When copying a numbered list, you must copy an extra, unformatted line after the end of the list. I'm not sure why, but if you don't the last item in the list will not be formatted as part of the list in the secondary document, but instead be an unformatted sentence.

3) Pasting multiple lists into the secondary document can cause formatting problems, such as the numbering not restarting. For the most part it's easy to fix (right-click the formatting in the second document), but something you should be aware of.

4) If you modify an item in the secondary document, that item will no longer be updated according to changes in the primary document. For instance, if you copy a numbered list (1-10) to the secondary document, then change the data of #5 from ''Lusoy'' to ''Lusoy on Cnet,'' from then on the secondary document will always say ''Lusoy on Cnet'' (not be updated), despite any changes you make to the primary document. However, you can change any non-linked data in the secondary document without repercussion.

Hope this helps,
John

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A variant to John's solution ...
Oct 15, 2005 4:10AM PDT

Also based on OLE, of course.

Just as you can include an Excel worksheet or graph (and quite a lot of other things) as an object in a Word document, you can include a Word document inside a Word document.

Make every list a separate Word-document (say, list1, list2, ... , listn, or any naming scheme you prefer).

Then make the 'long' document and the 'short' document and include every list therein. The procedure (in Word 97, but something comparable should be possible in bigher version):
- Insert>Object>Use File
- browse to the list
- check 'Link to file'
- uncheck 'Show icon'
- OK
Everytime you open (or refresh?) the long or short document it will retrieve the current version of the lists to show on the screen or print.

In fact, it being OLE, you can use both the short and the long document to doubleclick the inserted object and edit and save it. If you don't like that, make the list-documents read-only.

Hope this helps.


Kees

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Thank you
Oct 15, 2005 8:21AM PDT

Thank you for your tremendous help. You guys are life savers.

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(NT) (NT) Glad we could help.
Oct 15, 2005 8:25PM PDT