Whilst scanning, "hit abort to cancel scanning" .... "hit esc to cancel scanning"?
Don't want to make your list of options too long, but date modified is quite useful - eg to see files you've maybe photoshopped lately.

No worries. But because I'm curious...
Isn't it possible to have the complete html tags/code in the word doc, so when the merge is done, you have complete web pages?
 I saw a macro (maybe not necessary in late versions of word) to produce discrete merged documents.

 I have no idea whether a merged doc can be rtf or txt or must be in doc/docx format. If only docx, each individual doc would have to be converted to txt then html or else straight to html. If the merged output could be txt, wouldn't just an extension rename to html do the trick if the original doc "template" contained all necessary html code and tags?

I have no immediate use for your process, but like so many other things I read, it's just interesting for its own sake
 

Possible lines of enquiry: a. Mail merge using office variants b. excel macros to generate html