Hello Andrew,

When you have many documents that have come from unknown sources your best
bet would be to highlight each document entirely (Ctrl +A) and then copy it
(Ctrl +C) and then open Word Pad and paste it there. This will strip out all
the coding and gobbledygook that could be lurking in your document. You can
then copy it and go to Word and click on Edit and Paste Special and select
unformatted text. This will take away your formatting, but it's much easier
to set up your formatting one time rather than every time you make a change
to your document. You shouldn't have any problem with a large document in
word. I hope this has been helpful to you.

"Andrew" wrote:

Hi there

I have two largish Word 2003 documents - approximately 90 and 60 pages of
text and tables - which I would eventually like to make into one. Each
document was written by a number of authors from other organisations using (I
presume) different programs. We then copied the various sections into the
two larger documents. Both documents now have various formatting problems
where, for example, making a small edit may result in several pages changing
font size and becoming italicised, or page numbering is lost, or some other
time-consuming problem occurs. There does not appear to be any rhyme or
reason to this.

Is there any way to now rid the document of the various formats without
losing tables, headings, etc? Also, given that the end document will be
around 150 pages long, would it be better to divide the document up into eg.
linked chapters and appendices so that the smaller documents are easier to
work with?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Andrew