Word's "Master Document" feature

[quills at airmail.net]

At 10:04 AM -0500 6/1/07, Connie Giordano wrote:
>The whole debate on "Word can't handle long documents" seems to be 
>edging towards urban legend status.  Plenty of us have been able to 
>do multi-hundred page documents with tons of graphics with 
>relatively few problems.  Most of the problelms I encounter have to 
>do with forgetting some minor detail or being on deadline... not 
>with whether Word can do something.
>
>I have two sincere questions though:
>
>1)  Doesn't Framemaker require a disciplined approach, strict rules 
>and a healthy set of workarounds to  make it work the way people 
>want it to? I have never used it - in fact my current contract is 
>the ONLY gig I've had in 15 years where the tool was even available. 
>And if it does, then in fact it really is no more superior than any 
>other tool in the communicator's arsenal.
>
>2) has anyone worked with Master documetns in Word 2007?  I couldn't 
>find any feedback on the Word MVP site, and I'm curious to find out 
>if it works...or maybe it only works if you use the whole 
>collaboration tool set with Infopath and Sharepoint. 
>
>
>Connie P. Giordano
>The Right Words
>Communications & Information Design
>(704) 957-8450 (cell)

Work-arounds abound in Word. You do the same things in FrameMaker 
only they aren't workarounds, they have been designed to work. 
Numbering, is simple, and there is only one way to do it, unlike
Word, where if you use the most reliable way, it is likely that 
others coming along behind you to touch the document won't know what 
you did.

Scott