Word master documents: fixing and replacing?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

[Re-sent because this never reached the list the first time. Sorry if 
you see it twice!]

I'm well aware that Word's "master document" feature is badly broken 
and dangerous to your data, and thus, I don't use it and recommend that 
others avoid using it.

However, let's consider the hypothetical case in which I receive a 
collection of Word documents linked together by a master document. 
What's the best way to safely extract the Word documents from this 
particular house of cards before it crumbles? Could I simply delete the 
master document and all will be well, or is the process more involved? 
I assume I'll need to re-establish a common template to govern styles 
in all the documents, probably by doing a "save as" on one document and 
choosing .dot as the format? (Then delete all the content, of course.)

Now let's assume I've safely extracted the files. What's my best bet 
for faking the master document features? I assume I could do this with 
judicious application of "include" fields to create a master index and 
master table of contents, but since I've never tried this, I'd be 
grateful for advice on the specific syntax and how to deal with issues 
such as picking up a previous document's page numbering in subsequent 
documents.

Thanks!

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Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
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