Large Documents in Word

[Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>]

The business rationale for using Word is because "everyone can write, so
let's maintain our own technical documentation." The drawback is that it
could be indicative of the desire to phase out specific technical
communications services, so either you find another way to add value, or
find another job.

It is possible to maintain a successful workflow using Word. I worked at
one company where I inherited a brilliant authoring/publishing at one job
that my Sr. Technical Writer friend spent a few years perfecting.

This system ensured a pristine Word master stored in a source code version
control system, enforced track changes to support multiple editors
and reviewers, and manual reintegration by the technical writer.

In my opinion large documents should be authored in chunks with publishing
managed by a component content management system. You can still use Word as
the authoring interface. Groups like Thirty Six Software, DITAExchange, and
Quark have Word based systems for topic based authoring.

-Tony

On Monday, November 24, 2014, Lin Sims <ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com');>> wrote:

> Because of various changes at my company, I may be moving from FrameMaker
> to Word.
>
> The documents I handle run into the hundreds of pages. I've never handled a
> Word doc over 80 pages that didn't regularly crash or corrupt.
>
> I'm looking for people who have successfully handled very large documents
> in Word. I need to pick your brains to find out how you do it. I'm a
> moderately experienced user of Word, but I'm by no means a power user. If
> this move is made, I'm going to need a lot more information.
>
> --
> Lin Sims
>
>
>

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