Graham Mayor
... helping to ease the lives of Microsoft Word users.
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Insert a batch of files into a Word document
Boiler is a template add-in for Microsoft Word, originally conceived by Woody Leonard (with several modifications of my own) to include boilerplate text(s) into Word. It can be used to insert pre-prepared texts at the cursor - in much the same way that you would use autotext, autocorrect or includetext, or you can use it to combine a number of documents into one e.g. the separate chapters of a book. The documents can be selected from different folders, and the dialog will display files from those folders with the extensions DOCX, DOC and TXT. Other files are excluded.
The zip file includes versions of the add-in for Word 97-2000, 2002-2003 and 2007-2010. The 2002-3 and 2007-10 versions also include an EXE format installer, which will place the appropriate template in the default Word startup folder. If you have changed the location of the startup folder from the install default, change the path to the new location from the installer dialog.
Word will attempt to load any file located in either location on start-up.
The folder location for the Word startup folder will vary with operating system and/or user. If you don't know the location on your machine, check Word > Tools > Options > File Locations.
If you have not changed the default location of the Word Startup folder, it can be located (in English language versions of Windows) by typing %appdata%\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP in the address bar of Windows Explorer or your Internet Explorer web/file browser (but not Firefox etc).
The installer when run will produce the following dialogs:
When correctly installed the add-in will be loaded with Word and will appear in the templates dialog. In Word up to 2003 this is located via Tools > Templates and add-ins. In Word 2007 and 2010 the Templates button is on the Developer tab of the ribbon. The dialogs for all Word versions are similar.
In the 2000 and 2002-3 versions, the add-in provides a Custom toolbar called 'Insert Files' which should be displayed by default, but if it isn’t select View > Toolbars and check the 'Insert Files' entry.
In Word 2007/2010, the Insert Documents command can be found in the Boiler group on the Insert tab of the ribbon.
Clicking the buttons produces the following dialog:
In the Word 97/2000 version the following dialog is used instead.
Select the folder that contains the documents you wish to include and click ‘Open’ or ‘OK’ according to version.
This causes the following dialog box to be displayed (the Word 97-2000 version does not have all the options shown here, and the Word 2002/3 version uses a different font in the dialogs as the Calibri font used here is not available to a default installation of Word 2002/3).
The above dialog will appear each time the utility is run, however it can be hidden by clicking the check box at the bottom of the next screen
Click OK to insert the documents into the current document in the order selected.
From Version 2.2, by request, I have added the options to add or remove all listed files - see illustration below. The application is otherwise operationally similar to earlier versions.
The file browser will display all the files shown in the currently selected folder with the extensions DOC, DOCX and TXT. Word 2003 can only open DOCX when the Office 2007 compatibility pack has been installed. In the Word 2003 version, if a DOCX format file is selected, the user will be prompted with a warning
for the first such file. If you are certain that you have the required filter installed then you can ignore the message. Otherwise use the 'Remove' button to remove the inappropriate file from the list of files to be inserted. Continuing when the correct filter is not present will result in garbage and the likelihood of document corruption.
Because of the way Word formats documents, the function works best when all the inserted documents are based on the same template. There will inevitably be some formatting issues if the inserted documents use the same style names to produce different layouts.
To help minimise some of the issues that may occur, check the 'Insert each document on a new page' check box when inserting batches of documents. This inserts a new page section break between each document.
It is not the perfect solution, but it is as good as you are likely to get when working with disparate document types.
- Now download the add-in
'Boiler'
Whilst preparing the 'Print a batch of files' page which draws much from the 'boiler' add-in that has been a downloadable file from this site for several years, I realised that I had not created a separate page referring to that add-in.
The downloadable file did include comprehensive description of the add-in and its use, but the reasons why I did not prepare a page to accompany it are lost in the mists of time. This page now corrects that omission.