Is there a way to combine two Word files and have each one maintain their individual settings?

If I’m understanding your question correctly, a section break will take care of this. You can use different formats within different sections; for example, columns. I do this all the time when I want full-page-width text (such as for a heading and introduction) followed by content in a two-column format.

I’d suggest creating a section break and then inserting text below it so it doesn’t automatically format according to the settings of the first portion. Space down a few paragraphs and then insert the section break above them so there are blank paragraphs available below it. (Turn on the paragraph marker to make this easier to see.)

@Jeruba I just tried Section Breaks using the Next Page option then again using the Continuous option neither one of them transferred the format information. Tried it both immediately below and adding about a half page of space with no luck.

Try this
1) select text to move
2) put the cursor in the area you want to move it to
3) under edit>paste special (word 2003 and below) or under the home ribbon (2007) the down arrow under the paste button > paste special.
4) this will bring up the paste special dialog. Select unformatted text. This will paste the text into the columns but leave the original format of the target file.

@drhat77 It works, kind of. It took three tries with experimentation but it is a lot easier to clean up and correct than the straight copy method.

I had to make certain that the target page had the same font, font size and line spacing before I pasted otherwise it still ended up looking a mess but after I did the above it got the basic outline. I then went back and adjusted the margins for that section and some minor straightening up but I have done it.

Thank you and thank you @Jeruba for your input

Couldn’t you just PDF them, then combine them?

Not sure @Katniss I could give it a try. It may work but I have a pretty basic Adobe program that is mainly used for downloading and viewing stuff from the web. I don’t use it for composing and am much more comfortable with Word. Probably could though.

@rojo It should work, that how I combine files at work. It keeps everything in place and holds your fonts, in case you need to print it out on a different computer.