How to copy a word document section-by-section - vba

Question

I have to update a word document to the most recent company template but that task is not so easy as it looks.
According to this site all it takes is to perform the described steps but after doing it the document remained as it was before, for instance, the footer and header remained the same, that is, they were not updated to the ones set in the new template.
After spending some time on how to accomplish that task I realized that both the header and footer are not related to the template but to the underlying section instead.
Then, I took another approach that boiled down to copy only the section content without the header and the footer to the already defined sections in the new template and apparently it gets the job done.
Therefore, I would like to know if there is any way to perform these section copying automatically - through VBA - or even other better approach I can take ?

Answer 1

Personally, I wouldn't use VBA unless the task was huge. By the time you've created some code, run it, failed, re-written it, you'll probably find that it could have been completed faster manually, especially if, as appears, this is a one-off job. Of course, if you encounter a task which you realise is repetitive and time-consuming, then you might make use of the Macro Recorder.
I obviously don't have the documents in front of me but:
Do a little planning. Work out how many sections there should be, and of what type (Next Page Section Break, etc.).
Use Draft View and Goto (Ctrl-G), Section to help discover them.
Scribble down an outline of what the final headers/ footers should contain.
If applicable, note down the Style names from both templates and work out which ones need to be replaced.
(I would) work on a copy of the new template and copy the content from the old one. This will copy the styles from the old template at the same time. This might be the wrong way round for you - you'll have to decide this. Try both and see which is easiest to work with.
You can use the Replace dialog (Ctrl-H) to swap one style for another.
Display the Styles Window as well (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S).
From the Styles Window you can show the Style Manager. From here, and Import/Export, you can Delete, Rename and Copy Styles. Be careful about deleting styles as it is difficult to gauge what they will default to.
I would leave Headers and Footers until (second to) last and, when doing so, start at the beginning of the document and progress forward-only through the Sections, copying from the old template if necessary.
I would leave Bookmarks until the very end; by that time it should be easy to Insert them. If you have copied content from the old document then it should have carried the Bookmarks across as well, so it just a question of making sure that they are still in the right place.
Again, I don't have the templates in front of me, so I appreciate that some of this advice may not be relevant.
Hint: It might take a few attempts to get this right. If you get stuck at some point bear it mind that it might be better to start over - if it gets messy it is sometimes tricky to recover.