RE: WORD '03 Master Documents / merging documents

["Jonathan West" <jwest -at- mvps -dot- org>]

Hi Peggy

> 
> 1.  I have a very long System Design document that I 
> separated into 7 separate documents due to WORD constantly 
> crashing when this was one 'whole' document.  Boss was happy 
> with that decision when made.  NOW, I am informed that it 
> needs to become whole via the Master document approach, that 
> I have no experience with.  Can someone direct me to some 
> resource (other than the WORD help :( on how this works?  I 
> need to master this, it seems.

Tell your boss that using Master Documents for this is *most* inadvisable.
These articles will help him understand why.

Why Master Documents corrupt
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

Steve Hudson does say it is possible to safely use master documents, but the
restictions on what can safely be done are so great that it hardly seems
worthwhile.
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/masterdocs.doc

If you need a consolidated ToC & index while keeping the individual sections
separate, this article may help

Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

> 
> 
> 2.  I have been sent an updated, section of the SDD (from a 
> developer) that I need to MERGE into my working version of 
> this.  *I have always been LEARY of this feature.*  Can 
> someone please instill a reason for me to trust this/or 
> confirm my suspicions that this is not a feature worth trusting.
> What I understood I should do is OPEN the updated section (from the
> Developer) and merge MY former version into it.  What I 
> understand is that the *tracking changes that result will be 
> where MY working version differs from what the developer has 
> provided*.
> If I am mistaken, and this is not the most intelligent 
> approach, well, I'd be grateful for someone to set me straight.

If you open your document, and merge the developer's version, text added by
the developer will show up as insertions, and text deleted will show as
deletions. But I would strongly recommend you work on copies of the
documents when doing this, in case of problems.

Regards
Jonathan West

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