Do you know that LibreOffice has Master Document feature? This feature allows you to join multiple documents, rearrange them, and then save them as one joined document. We can use this feature to quickly and easily merge ODT files into one. I will give you example by joining 10 transcript documents into single ODT or PDF file with a total of 600 pages with 90 pictures inside. Don't worry as you can download that examples below. Let's learn!
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Preparations
As example, I will show you how I did joining 10 transcript documents of my own online courses into 1 document. (however, they are in Indonesian). If you want to practice, you can download all of these documents from https://archive.org/download/mkoteknoplasma.
Total size of these 10 files are 11MB:
Start LibreOffice
Run your LibreOffice Writer.
Start Master Document
Go to menu bar File > New > Master Document. This will show you a new document with a small dialog named Navigator.
Insert ODT files into Master
On Navigator dialog, click Insert > File > file chooser dialog appears > select multiple ODT files as you wish > click Open > all documents appear in current document. You can see your status bar shows page number equal to all pages from multiple documents. For example, mine is 600 pages or more.
Rearrange documents order
On Navigator dialog, you can easily move up or move down (click Up or Down arrow button) any document to sort them in order as you wish. For example, of course I want my final transcript to be sorted properly from number 1 to number 10, so I rearrange them like picture below.
Save
Press Save button and this will save joined document as .odm (Open Document Master) format.
Save as ODT
To save as normal .odt (Open Document Text) format, go to File > Export > choose ODT (.odt) from file format selection > name it as you wish > Save.
Test Export to PDF
Not only ODT, you can also export the joined document to PDF by menu bar File > Export as > PDF. See example below, as I said above, it is consisted of 600 pages.
Final Result
Your ODT document is now a merge of all multiple documents.
See the properties of your document, it should show 600 pages or equal to page number of source documents.
If you see them on the File Manager, then the file names, formats, and sizes are like this:
Editing
If we need to edit, it is to add a line break in every joint page between every end of a document and beginning of next document. We just need to put the cursor at the end of document and press Ctrl+Enter to make next document moved to a new, separate page. That's all. Happy working!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.