Thread: Duplicating certain text parts of a document faster Word 2003,2007

You want your documents to have the same contents, with slight changes in the details - for example signatures to be able to send them to two different recipients. The Mail Merge function would be too much for that.

Using a link, you can make every text change get copied automatically in another area. First write the desired text on the first page and manually enter a page-break in the end with [Ctrl]+[Enter]. On the second page, enter the different text parts like headers and footers. Then on the first page, select the text to be copied and copy it to the clipboard. On the second page, select the command 'Edit/Paste'. In this field, select the type 'Rich Text Format (RTF)' and click on the 'Paste link' option next to it. After the confirmation with 'OK', Word creates a field, which reproduces the original content as it is and usually updates it automatically with a slight delay.

In Word 2007, click on the menu 'Start' and then in the multi-function toolbar on the arrow under 'Paste', to execute the command 'Paste'. For the next texts take care that changes to the source text are made within the source area of the link. Besides, you must not make any changes in the linked section, which can be identified with the grey of the border, since these are automatically overwritten. In the context menu of the linked area, you can manually 'Update the links' or make other settings through 'Linked document object/Links'.