Word: Merge Comments and Changes from Multiple Documents

If several persons are working on revising the same document, you’ll end up with multiple changes and comments. So far, so good. After all, that’s the goal. But all these comments and changes will be available on different documents.

So, how do you merge the comments and revisions from multiple Word documents? You can do that by using the Compare and Combine options in Word.

Important Notes:

There’s a limit to the number of documents you can merge at a time. More specifically, you can only combine two documents at a time.

In other words, you can merge the original document and the first revision. Save the document. That’s step number one.

The new document will then serve as the starting point for merging the second revision. And so on. You need to repeat these steps until you’ve merged all the revised versions.

Steps to Merge Comments and Changes from Multiple Files

1. Launch Microsoft Word and click on the Review menu.
2. Then click on Compare → Combine.
3. Select the original document and the first revised version.
   • Make sure to choose the document you sent for review. Double-check that. Working with multiple documents can sometimes be confusing.
   • The same applies to the revised documents. Make sure you’re selecting the right document.
4. Click on More for additional document merging options. Select the elements you want to merge (comments, formatting, etc.)
5. Go to Show changes and select New document.
   • For extra clarity, we suggest you display the changes in a new document.
   • The new document is visible in the middle of the screen. It is a combined version of the original file and the revised version.
   • You can easily keep track of all the changes with the help of the two secondary sections. The revisions are on the left, while the original document’s on the right.
6. Name and save the new document.

To merge additional revisions and comments, you need to repeat the process we just described. The only difference is that the original document will now be the new document you just created at step 4.

If you want to focus only on the end result, you can simply combine them while hiding the original and the revised version. To do this, go to Compare → Show Source Documents → Hide Source Documents.

And this is how you can merge changes from multiple documents using Microsoft Word.