Looking for Specifics of MS Word Weaknesses

[Gwen Barnes <gwen -dot- barnes -at- MUSTANG -dot- COM>]

-> I have not used Word for long documents, but have been warned that it
-> has significant limitations, particular with respect to indexing and
-> referencing.  The Word documentation indicates that these should be
-> manageable by using a master document-subdocument structure, but I
-> need to know if this is realistic, and what its limitations are.  I a
-> know any other significant limitations that Word may have on doing
-> documents that are a few hundred pages long.

I have successfully produced documents up to 650 pages in Word 6, with
extensive indexing, some cross-references and a TOC at the beginning of
each chapter. I switched from PageMaker to Word for large projects, and
have had far fewer problems with production and printing since I did so.

Word has some idiosyncracies that, generally speaking, are far less
dangerous than those in PageMaker. If you're willing to invest the time
into learning and using some of Word's advanced features, including
master/subdocuments, and you remember to save your work often <g>,
you'll be at least as successful with it as I have been.

Just remember that auto-save does not work in a master document, and
that macros tend to eat memory over time and you'll need to get out and
then restart things a few times a day -- time it for when you take your
anti-carpal-tunnel- syndrome rest breaks.

-> would like to know what gotchas I would encounter, for example,  if I
-> had to take a Word document and add iconic elements in the margins.

Create a table with 2 cells -- one for your text and one in the margin
for your graphic. Put the graphic in the first cell, and the paragraph
of text in the other cell. Much easier than dealing with frames and
anchors.

Cheers,                                                 @DISCLAIMER@
Gwen                                         gwen -dot- barnes -at- mustang -dot- com
MSI * Connecting the world                              805-873-2500