If you use a computer in your daily life and have to work with text documents a lot due to work or projects, you might have a lot of doc files lying around on your system. Microsoft Word has been around for decades and remains one of the most popular and intuitive text editors used by tens of millions of computer users.

However, if you’ve an important document that shouldn’t be overwritten, it makes more sense to work on a copy of the document and preserve the original. While duplicating a document by simply copying and pasting it in the file explorer is an option, you can also make a copy of a Word document using a built-in feature of Microsoft’s text editor.

In this article, we’ve discussed how you can make a clone or copy of a Word document while opening the file to edit, so that the original remains untouched.

Also read: How to insert a Non-Breaking Space in Microsoft Word?

Creating a copy of Word document

Step 1: Click on File on the top-left of the toolbar at the top or use the shortcut key Ctrl + O.

Step 2: On the next page, click on Open (located on the sidebar to the left) and then click on Browse under Other locations.

Step 3: Now in the file explorer, select the Word document of which you want to make a copy before editing. Then click on the arrow icon to the right of the Open button and click on the Open as Copy option from the dropdown list.

Microsoft Word will now clone the selected Word document and open the duplicate, leaving the original untouched. This is helpful if you want to modify the existing document but also keep a copy of the original.

The cloned Word file will now be saved automatically at the same location as the original file with a prefix — usually “Copy (1)”.

Also read: How to insert a Bullet in Microsoft Word?