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>
> A colleague has inherited a 300+-page MS Word document. Unfortunately,
> she doesn't have the option of working in Frame, but she'd like to break
> the document up into smaller, more manageable component files that she
> could then build into the MS Word equivalent of a FrameMaker book file.
> Neither of us is sure what features are available to do this in Word,
> let alone how to use them. Can anyone please tell us what Word feature
> we're looking for here, and better still, refer us to a web site that
> would give us some tips on how to use it?
>
The feature that Microsoft included to cover this is called Master
Documents. The best advice I can give is not to use them. This article
describes why.
300 pages is not terribly large for a single Word document, even if it is
rich in formatting. I've managed to deal with documents up to 2000 pages in
a single file (though you need to be using Win2K, Word 2K and a
well-specific machine to cope with that size of doc).
The best advice for dealing with large documents in Word is to pretend that
Word is actually Frame, and don't take advantage of any of the "ease-of-use"
features that MS has put in to make it easier to write a one-page letter.
Concentrate on making sure that you have a template defining a coherent set
of styles, and use them religiously.
If you really want to break up the document, but also want to be able to
create a consolidated Toc and index, look up the RD field in Help in Word.
That shows you how to use RD fields to reference other documents in the Toc.
Regards
Jonathan West
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