How can I “merge” one document as a new version of another?

Question

So imagine there's a SharePoint library full of business documents, complete with document versioning. One day, a committee decides that 'Document X' and 'Document Y' should really be one document and they're gonna keep the name 'Document Y.' Is there any way to tell SharePoint from the UI "hey, take Document Y and make it the newest version of Document X, retaining all of the history?"

Answer 1

Out of the box, no.

You could theoretically right custom ribbon / context menu actions that would allow you to do this.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/gg552606.aspx#bk_createcustcomp

The SharePoint API would allow you to use the bytes from one file to save as a new version in a different file.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4117297/how-to-upload-a-file-as-a-new-version-to-a-document-library-using-the-object-mod

After you've updated the bytes, delete the old file and you would be good to go.

Answer 2

Here is a way: Download all your various versions of the document to your computer. For example:

DocumentName X
DocumentName y
DocumentName z

• Now Upload "documentName X" as "DocumentName"
• Now Check out DocumentName (save in your local Drafts folder)
• Now Open "DocumentName y" in Word/application and save as "DocumentName" over your sharepoint Draft.
• Now check in the document and note in the comments it is version Y.
• Now Check out DocumentName again (save in your local Drafts folder)
• Now Open "DocumentName z" in Word/application and save as "DocumentName" over your sharepoint Draft.
• Now check in the document and note in the comments it is version Z.

Hey presto: Done!

Answer 3

No.

You'd need to have some sort of status column that shows Document X as being decomissioned. You'd take the content of X ad it into Y and in the check in comments of Y, state that Doc X was merged in and to view that decomissioned document to view it's history prior to being merged into Y.