Sarah has a document that she needs to save in two different folders on her system. She wonders if there is a way to have any updates to one copy of the document be automatically reflected in the other copy of the document.
There are actually several ways you can approach this problem. One is to create a macro that actually saves the document into two locations. Here is an example of a macro that does that.
Sub DualSave() Dim FirstFolder As String Dim SecondFolder As String Dim DocName As String Dim objF As Object Dim retVal As Long SecondFolder = "c:\MyLocation\" With ActiveDocument If Not .Saved Then .Save FirstFolder = .Path & "\" DocName = .Name If FirstFolder = SecondFolder Then MsgBox "WARNING! Second folder is the same as first folder." Exit Sub End If Set objF = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") retVal = -1 On Error Resume Next retVal = objF.CopyFile(FirstFolder & DocName, _ SecondFolder & DocName, True) On Error GoTo 0 Set objF = Nothing If retVal <> 0 Then MsgBox "File could not be copied to folder " & SecondFolder End If End If End With End Sub
Such a macro is rather simplistic, in that it copies from where you are now to a second folder (specified in the SecondFolder variable). That means that if you open up the document in the second folder and then save it, the original document is not updated and running the DualSave macro will generate an error. (The error occurs because the first and second folder names will be the same.) For this reason, a macro approach such as this is more suitable if you want to copy to a second location as a way to make backups of your documents. An add-in created by Word MVP Graham Mayor does essentially the same thing:
https://www.gmayor.com/SaveInTwoPlacesAddIn.htm
Another approach (that doesn't require a macro) is to create your main document and then create the mirror document by using the "Paste Link" capabilities of Word. You simply select the entire first document and then use, within the mirror document, Paste Link to paste the information. The result is that the mirror document always reflects whatever is in the main document. (Additional information on how to link Word documents is presented in other WordTips.) The drawback is that you cannot make changes in the mirror document and have those reflected in the main document; the mirroring is only in one direction.
Perhaps the best solution, however, is to not rely on Word at all. Instead, save your main document and, in Windows, create a shortcut to that main document. Move the shortcut to the second folder, and you are ready. Now someone can open either the original document or the shortcut, and it will always refer to the same document. To create the shortcut, do the following:
Your shortcut is now in place. If you double-click it, Word opens the original document. You now essentially have a single document accessible through two different folders. The drawback to this approach, of course, is that the second folder only contains a shortcut to the original document, which means you should not consider the shortcut as a backup of the original document; it isn't. If you are actually looking for a way to make backup copies of documents, then use one of the other solutions discussed in this tip.
Note:
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2019-01-14 14:10:58
David Gray
Occam's Razor wins again; I've used shortcuts to provide myself with ready access to reference documents in multiple project directories (folders) for many years. If you need access to folders, there are at least two similar options, each good in its own way.
1) Folders are legitimate targets for shortcuts.
2) Windows provides the mklink.exe system utility, which can create junctions, which appear in the folder tree as if they were child folders. For example, the following command creates a junction, F:\Source_Code\Visual_Studio\Projects\WizardWrx_Libs\AnyCSV\docs , which shows up in F:\Source_Code\Visual_Studio\Projects\WizardWrx_Libs\AnyCSV as a subfolder called docs . In this example, the source folder, F:\Source_Code\Visual_Studio\Projects\WizardWrx_Libs\AnyCSV\docfx_project\_site, is nested more deeply within the parent folder, but junctions can point to any directory that is visible to Windows.
mklink /J F:\Source_Code\Visual_Studio\Projects\WizardWrx_Libs\AnyCSV\docs F:\Source_Code\Visual_Studio\Projects\WizardWrx_Libs\AnyCSV\docfx_project\_site
Junctions are present in most Windows installations; they are the reason that you can still refer to "C:\Documents and Settings\" even though no such actual directory exists in modern Windows installations. When Windows sets itself up, it creates "C:\Documents and Settings\" as a junction that points to C:\Users. Since I do my best to avoid using "C:\Documents and Settings\" as much as possible, I didn't give much thought to junctions until it occurred to me that it was the simplest way to solve a problem that was preventing me from efficiently maintaining the documentation for the libraries that I host on GitHub.
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