Hello all - would like a bit of practical help if possible. Here is the situation. I currently have eight Word files which are all chapters of my thesis and I need to make them into one long file. I am also using Mendeley to do automatic referencing. How do I make one long file? Cut and paste into a new document? What can possibly go wrong!!? Also did you print out your whole thesis and correct it on the paper version? I can't seem to really spot mistakes reading on the screen (sorry trees).

Yep, just cut and paste into the one file. Surprisingly ok! I used Mendeley too - it just knows whether the references are different or the same so there are no issues there.

I always print out and read - I also find mistakes more easily that way.

Thanks!

Lots! Unfortunately it's impossible to predict what exactly.

I would strongly recommend going and having a look at whatever your uni's thesis presentation regulations are e.g. with respect to font size, type, margins, whether you can do it double sided (in which case you might want to look at how to do 'mirrored margins' so as not to waste space).

Then open a fresh Word doc, and apply all the relevant formatting to the blank doc before you paste anything at all in. This includes making sure the 'Styles' for headings and subheadings meet your requirements. Then, when you paste in, use the 'paste special' option, and your text should adopt the formatting of your master document, rather than whatever it was before. You might still have to reapply heading styles, but at least the body text should fulfil whatever your specifications are.

Good luck!

HazyJane is correct - all my formatting and headings were the same on every document, including the one I was pasting into which is probably why I didn't have any problems with this.

Thanks