I have around 100 separate Google Docs files that I need to consolidate into one master document. The manual copy and paste approach is really time consuming and tedious. Plus when I try copying content this way, all the comments from the original documents get lost in the process.
I’m wondering if there’s a more efficient method to accomplish this task. Maybe there’s a built-in feature in Google Docs that I’m missing, or perhaps some kind of add-on or script that could automate this merging process while preserving the comments and formatting from all the source documents.
Has anyone dealt with a similar situation before? What would be the best approach to combine all these files without losing any important data like comments or suggestions?
honestly, just use google takeout to export everythng as word docs first. then use word’s combine documents feature - it handles comments really well. after merging, upload back to google drive and convert. it’s a bit roundabout but works way beter than most scripts i’ve tried.
I faced a similar challenge when merging documents from a collaborative project. To streamline the process, I created a new Google Doc and used the Insert > Break > Page break function between each document’s content. By opening two browser tabs—one for the master document and the other for the source files—I was able to efficiently copy and paste each section while maintaining a majority of the formatting and preserving comments, although they did shift a bit. It took me about three hours for 80 documents, which was much more effective than using automated tools that tended to crash or mess up formatting. Remember to save regularly, as larger documents can slow down Google Docs significantly.
Google Apps Script is your best bet for bulk operations like this. I dealt with something similar - had about 50 docs and wrote a script that pulled everything into one master file. It uses the Drive API to grab your docs and the Docs API to extract content while keeping most formatting intact. Comments are trickier though - you’d need extra code for those. If you’re not into coding, there are third-party options like DocHub or some Chrome extensions that do bulk merging, but I can’t guarantee they’ll preserve comments. Another route: convert everything to Word first, use Word’s master document feature, then convert back to Google Docs. Just know you’ll probably lose some comments in the process.