In computing, a compound document is a document that "combines multiple document formats, either by reference, by inclusion, or both." Compound documents are often produced using word processing software, and may include text and non-text elements such as barcodes, spreadsheets, pictures, digital videos, digital audio, and other multimedia features.

Compound document technologies are commonly utilized on top of a software componentry framework, but the idea of software componentry includes several other concepts apart from compound documents, and software components alone do not enable compound documents. Well-known technologies for compound documents include:

• ActiveX Documents
• Bonobo by Ximian (primarily used by GNOME)
• KParts in KDE
• Mixed Object Document Content Architecture
• Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
• Object linking and embedding (OLE) by Microsoft; see Compound File Binary Format
• Open Document Architecture from ITU-T (not used)
• OpenDoc by IBM and Apple Computer (now defunct)
• RagTime
• Verdantuim
• XML and XSL are encapsulation formats used for compound documents of all kinds

The first public implementation of compound documents was on the Xerox Star workstation, released in 1981.