Did you know that aside from having the ability to link information from one Windows application into your Word documents, you can link other word documents to your current document? Well you can and it can really come in handy with you are working with a document that needs information from other documents, such as, perhaps you have a contract that has boilerplate clauses in it. Those clauses may be stored in another document. You can then pull them into your current document when you need them.
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- Place your cursor where you would like the document to be inserted and linked.
- Click the Insert tab of your Ribbon.
- In the Text group, click the down-arrow next to the Object tool to display choices.
- Click Text from the File to display the dialog box.
- Specify a file name for the document you would like inserted and linked.
- Click on the drop-down arrow at the right-hand side of the Insert button to display a menu of different ways you can insert the document.
- Select Insert As Link from document from the menu.
The process will result in Word displaying the other file but the INCLUDETEXT field is used instead of the actual text from the file. The advantage of adding links in this manner instead of inserting the other file completely, is that the original documents (the ones you are linked to) can be independently updated and those changes are then reflected in your document with the links. Of course, this depends on whether you update the links in your document by selecting the link and clicking F9.