Modular Approach in MS Word

[Paul Gerle <PaulG -at- mdli -dot- com>]

Whirlers,

I have a documentation "situation" for which I need a really clever person
to help!  (I know I'm in the right place!)

I'm creating a large set of Use Cases (software requirement specifications)
in MS Word.  Each Use Case contains one or more screen descriptions.  Each
screen description includes a list of fields.  So, I'll end up with many
Word documents containing:

Use Case A
    Screen 1
        Field a
        Field b
        Field c
    Screen 2
        Field d
        Field e

Use Case B
    Screen 3
        Field a
        Field b
        Field m
        Field p
        Field y
    Screen 4
        Field b
        Field c
        Field e
        Field p

Obviously, the same field may be displayed on multiple screens, and when I
complete the set of Use Cases, I want to compile a master list of fields
(for external language translation) WITHOUT going through many Word
documents manually, jotting down field names, retyping (or "cut 'n'
pasting"), importing into Excel, removing duplicates...  ACK!

Not to mention - if the name of a field changes, I would have to manually
scan/search 25 Uses Cases to determine the 17 places where the name of that
field appears!

I would rather create a master repository of field names and import them "by
reference" into the corresponding screen section of the Word documents.  So
if a field appears on screens contained in 6 different documents, changing
its name once dynamically updates the name wherever it appears.

It's like a one-to-many (many-to-many?) relationship in Access.  Each field
name should be stored once, used many.

Any ideas???

Thank you in advance.  I'll compile the responses and post it to the list if
everyone responds to me directly.

Rehards,

Paul Gerle

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write
faster than anybody who can write better."
      - A. J. Liebling


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