Simple Question about Microsoft Word
 

I know, nobody uses MS Word anymore, but it's here at the office I work at.

A couple of questions. First, I just spent two whole days taking 200 individual files and placing them in one document. It was a occupational health and safety thing. Someone had written all the information on individual documents. So it was my job to take all those documents and place them into one big document. So I had to open, select all, cut, open, paste every document. My question after all that is did I just waste a lot of time? Is there an easier way to do what I just did?

Second. Concerning the above 200 files. I want to print the list of all 200 files so I can use it as a checklist as I go through the new big document to ensure I have all the documents included, and in the right place. But I can't seem to find a way to just print the filenames of all the files. WHen I highlight the list, it opens all the files up, and I don't want that. Now, PRINTSCREEN seems like an obvious choice here, but it doesn't work, at least on my comp. So any other solutions???

Who says they don't use word? They LIE!!! I don't know about word merging files but there are programs that merge files. For the file list I would either find a program for that or use print screen, once you press printscreen you have to go into ms paint or the like and paste it, then you can print it.

do you use outlook? thats the only way I know of to print a directory list

Drop out to a command prompt. Change to the directory where all of those files live. Then type:
dir /b /on > list.txt

That will give you an list of all the files in that directory; "/on" puts them in alphabetical order; "/b" puts in in 'brief' format, so you don't get all the filesize and other stuff; "> list.txt" directs the output to a text file, so you can load that file in Word and print it.

If you type:
dir /?

it'll list the other options that might suit you better.

Here's a fairly simple way to do the multiple file insertions:

When you have your Word document open, click Insert at the top, then click file and select the file(s) you would like to be inserted into your document. Voila! No more copy and pasting.

As far as the checklist goes, if you're familiar with the command-line, you can navigate to the folder you have these files in, then do a dir > list.txt and a text file will be created with the filenames of that folder nice and organized for you.

Edit: Looks like Red beat me to the second answer. Use his method, it's much better. :thumbsup:

You lost me at "drop out to a command prompt." I'm dumb as shit when it comes ot computers... anyway, I'll try it.


Thanks, by the way, for all your help!

I'm going to assume you've got a computer with a "Windows" button in the lower left (the one with the windows Start Menu logo on it).

1) Hold that Windows button down and press the letter "e". This will open Windows Explorer.
2) Click with your mouse through your directories until you can see all the 200 files you are interested in printing on the right side of the window.
3) Hold down the Windows button and press the letter "r". This will open the "run" command box.
4) If you are using Windows XP, type in that box "CMD" and press enter. If you are using Windows 98, ME, or 2000, type in that box "command" and press enter.
5) You will now be in that command prompt they mentioned earlier and you can type in the command dir /b /on > list.txt and hit enter.
6) Once you are done, type 'exit' to close the command prompt window.
7) the newly created file list.txt will appear in that window with the 200 files, and you can then open it in Word and print it out.

I hope this helps.

I tried the above dir/b/on>list.txt
It worked when I put in dir/b/on not >list.txt
Also I made the command page a full screen and I know how to exit it, but I don't know what to type to make it a small screen again.

ALT+Enter should make it a small screen.

Like others said you can use dir /b /on >list.txt to send the directory to a file called list.txt. However if you have a printer directly connected to your computer, you could also do dir /b /on >prn to have the document sent directly to the default printer or dir /b /on > lpt1 to send the document directly to the printer on lpt1. Of course you may have to manually eject the page from the printer but then you don't have a file haning around for no reason either.