We're responsible for formatting a long report in which
each chapter is written by a different company.  We
periodically collect the chapters together and format
them to produce an interim draft, then split the draft
back up into individual chapters so the authors can work
on them.

The trouble is that when the chapters get returned to the
authors and they update their fields, all the section
numbers revert to "1.x.x" (instead of, for instance in
chapter 5, 5.x.x).  This is an inconvenience rather than
a real problem, but is there a way around it?

Owen