explaination of include file?

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keith brickey - 03 May 2004 23:45 GMT

Can someone give me an overview of how to use a master document with other
word documents "included?"

Thanks,

Keith

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Graham Mayor - 04 May 2004 08:36 GMT

The short answer to your question is don't do that. The master document
function doesn't work well and will eventually destroy your document.
Combine your documents into one large document. Word can work quite happily
with huge documents.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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> Can someone give me an overview of how to use a master document with
> other word documents "included?"
>
> Thanks,
>
> Keith

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Phil Woollacott - 04 May 2004 10:21 GMT

I disagree with Graham. I have used W2002 and now W2003
and find that Word copes just as badly in both master /
sub and "one large file"

The problems I have faced, centers around TOC's on each
chapter. Whilst perform this action within on long
document - I get to fourth of fifth chapter before I get
the error message "There are too many edits in the
document. This operation will be incomplte. Please save
your work"

When I use master and subs - I get to the seventh or
eighth before receiving the same error.

NOTE: I have plenty of HDD and RAM!

So my best advice is go but something like Adobe Frame
maker to handle large documents!!!

>-----Original Message-----
>The short answer to your question is don't do that. The master document
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>
>.

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Graham Mayor - 04 May 2004 10:32 GMT

There are many users of this newsgroup who regularly produce large documents
in single files. I personally have produced books of hundreds of pages, and
I know of fellow contributors who have produced documents of thousands of
pages.

The point I was trying to get over was that the Master document function is
broken. It does not work correctly in any version of Word.

If you prefer to use Framemaker then I have no argument with your choice,
but that's a different issue entirely.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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> I disagree with Graham. I have used W2002 and now W2003
> and find that Word copes just as badly in both master /
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
>>
>> .

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Charles Kenyon - 04 May 2004 15:53 GMT

I've had documents with thousands of pages, cross-references, footnotes, and
a table of contents. Word handles it well. I suspect that your problems
arise from using direct formatting rather than styles. Unnecessary section
breaks can also make documents more fragile.
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/document_corruption.htm.

I agree with Graham that the master document feature is to be avoided.
http://addbalance.com/word/masterdocument.htm.

While I haven't used it, the combination of INCLUDETEXT fields and RD fields
to break a large document into smaller chunks has been used successfully by
many.

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Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

> I disagree with Graham. I have used W2002 and now W2003
> and find that Word copes just as badly in both master /
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]
> >
> >.

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macropod - 04 May 2004 08:41 GMT

Hi Keith,

Short answer: Don't.

Long answer: Word's 'Master Document' feature is unreliable and pron
to document destruction. Instead, you can use an ordinary document wit
'INCLUDETEXT' fields to consolidate the material in other documents, o
'RD' fields to create a common Table of Contents for a group o
documents. Word's help file has more information on how to use thes
fields.

Cheer

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