Advice about Master documents

[Jeff]

Hi (using Word 2002 in XP).

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the chapters in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

 

[Anne Troy]

1. Yes, Master/Subs in Word still sucks.
2. Don't worry about corruption of your one document. Instead, why don't you
turn on creating a backup file under Tools-->Options, Save tab?
3. How big is your document? When I was writing my book, I used the document
map feature to move around 'cause inevitably, I kept inserting new pieces of
info that belonged here and there.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

See here, for one:
Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

IncludeText Fields might be an option, though this is a simplistic intro to
them:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm

Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html

More on why MDs are unreliable:

Why Master Documents corrupt:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

You are not wrong to worry about putting all eggs in one basket, but the
answer to that is backup frequently--turn on the Make BackUp option as Anne
said, but also backup frequently yourself.

I am not sure what difference frames may make to any of these options.
Theoretically, none, I think.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello Jeff

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

To add to what others have said already: A big question for me is
whether the individual files you have right now are based on the same
template, and whether the formatting used is consistent over these
files. These things need sorting out if not only done so; and before
that, even _thinking_ about a Master Document might corrupt your work!

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the chapters in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

You could easily test the big file scenario: Bring all the chapters into
one file via INCLUDETEXT fields. Save the file with active fields, then
(in a copy), unlink all the fields. You have one big file now. Fiddle
around with it a bit, how many pages are there? How big (filesize)?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Like Daiya, I don't see much problem with frames per se. The question
I'd raise here is what you use them for: Are you running body text
around your frames/illustrations? What kind of illustrations are we
talking about, btw, and how were they inserted into Word (presuming they
were not made in Word itself)?

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Jeff]

Hi Robert

To add to what others have said already: A big question for me is whether
the individual files you have right now are based on the same template,
and whether the formatting used is consistent over these files. These
things need sorting out if not only done so; and before that, even
_thinking_ about a Master Document might corrupt your work!

Yes they all were and will be written using the same template and styles.

You could easily test the big file scenario: Bring all the chapters into
one file via INCLUDETEXT fields. Save the file with active fields, then
(in a copy), unlink all the fields. You have one big file now. Fiddle
around with it a bit, how many pages are there? How big (filesize)?

There will be about 400 pages (book pages) plus a great many images. Never
heard of INCLUDETEXT fields. I'll have to read up on it.

Like Daiya, I don't see much problem with frames per se. The question I'd
raise here is what you use them for: Are you running body text around your
frames/illustrations? What kind of illustrations are we talking about,
btw, and how were they inserted into Word (presuming they were not made in
Word itself)?

I only recently discovered frames which is why I asked the question since
they add complexity, and yes I am running text around the frames and their
captions. The illustrations are mostly photographs. I insert them into Word
using Insert/picture/from file. Is that the best way to do it?

Thanks.

 

[Jeff]

Thanks for replying Anne.

1. Yes, Master/Subs in Word still sucks.
2. Don't worry about corruption of your one document. Instead, why don't
you
turn on creating a backup file under Tools-->Options, Save tab?

I have that, but my impression is that will avoid losing unsaved data, but
not file corruption.

3. How big is your document? When I was writing my book, I used the
document
map feature to move around 'cause inevitably, I kept inserting new pieces
of
info that belonged here and there.

Size will be about 400 book text pages, but with a lot of images in
addition. I have to learn about the document map feature. Did not know
about it.

Thanks.

 

[Jeff]

Hi Daiya.

Thanks for all the urls. I'll look them up.

I already do frequent backups, so my concern is not about losing the entire
file, but opening the file and finding the images corrupted, replaced by red
Xs or something like that. That would be very hard to recover from.

Thanks.

--

Jeff Stevens
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam
(e-mail address removed)

See here, for one:
Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

IncludeText Fields might be an option, though this is a simplistic intro
to
them:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm

Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html

More on why MDs are unreliable:

Why Master Documents corrupt:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

You are not wrong to worry about putting all eggs in one basket, but the
answer to that is backup frequently--turn on the Make BackUp option as
Anne
said, but also backup frequently yourself.

I am not sure what difference frames may make to any of these options.
Theoretically, none, I think.

Hi (using Word 2002 in XP).

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking
for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the chapters
in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that
might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: <http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/>
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ:

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Make sure that your backups are separate and don't overwrite each other. A
file may corrupt before you realize that it is.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

Hi Daiya.

Thanks for all the urls. I'll look them up.

I already do frequent backups, so my concern is not about losing the
entire
file, but opening the file and finding the images corrupted, replaced by
red
Xs or something like that. That would be very hard to recover from.

Thanks.

--

Jeff Stevens
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam
(e-mail address removed)

See here, for one:
Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

IncludeText Fields might be an option, though this is a simplistic intro
to
them:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm

Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html

More on why MDs are unreliable:

Why Master Documents corrupt:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

You are not wrong to worry about putting all eggs in one basket, but the
answer to that is backup frequently--turn on the Make BackUp option as
Anne
said, but also backup frequently yourself.

I am not sure what difference frames may make to any of these options.
Theoretically, none, I think.

Hi (using Word 2002 in XP).

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various
times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a
separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking
for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as
a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing
in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the
chapters
in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with
the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that
might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference
in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: <http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/>
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ:

 

[Anne Troy]

Hi, Jeff. Some things you can do to AVOID corruption:
1. If you use drawing objects, please, please, please do it in PowerPoint
and group them, then copy and paste as a picture into your Word doc. If you
lose the image, it's in PPT. Also, corruption OFTEN occurs with documents
that contain multiple drawn objects with multiple parts.
2. Make sure your pictures are compressed and resized BEFORE you insert them
into Word. A good photo shouldn't need to be more than 100KB. You can use
www.Irfanview.com as a free graphic compression software.
3. Do not crop or resize pictures in Word. When you crop, you're literally
carrying a copy of the original size AND the cropped size! Double-dipping!
4. Get yourself a GMail account (I've got invites if you need one). Then,
email a copy of the document to yourself when you're done working on it.
Heck...I bet somebody could get you a macro that'll do it for you
automatically when you close your document.
5. Never save it to a lesser version--not an important doc like this. It
tends to bloat the doc.
6. Don't be afraid of a document that's 10MB, though even a 400+ Word 2003
document of ONLY text isn't quite 2MB.
7. Unless your "desktop publishing" it now, don't put the pictures in until
you're done writing.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

It's my understanding that the Red X is often a display problem but doesn't
necessarily mean the images have been corrupted, but that's just some small
experience, and on the Mac.

Like Anne says, don't do any photo editing in Word, in which case you should
have the original image files somewhere, no? Making corrupted images an
exceedingly painful and tedious situation, but not irrecoverable.

Re Doc Map, here's some more links:

How it works:
http://shaunakelly.com/word/documentmap/index.html

A couple caveats that *should* be irrelevant to you, using Word 2002:
http://daiya.mvps.org/docmap.htm

Another good way to work with long documents, especially if you decide to
rearrange text, is Outline View:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/UsingOLView.htm
(though rearranging across IncludeText fields could get ugly)

 

[Jeff]

Make sure that your backups are separate and don't overwrite each other. A

file may corrupt before you realize that it is.

Now I am paranoid all over again <grin>.

--

Jeff Stevens
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam
(e-mail address removed)

Make sure that your backups are separate and don't overwrite each other. A
file may corrupt before you realize that it is.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

Hi Daiya.

Thanks for all the urls. I'll look them up.

I already do frequent backups, so my concern is not about losing the
entire
file, but opening the file and finding the images corrupted, replaced by
red
Xs or something like that. That would be very hard to recover from.

Thanks.

--

Jeff Stevens
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam
(e-mail address removed)

See here, for one:
Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

IncludeText Fields might be an option, though this is a simplistic intro
to
them:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm

Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html

More on why MDs are unreliable:

Why Master Documents corrupt:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

You are not wrong to worry about putting all eggs in one basket, but the
answer to that is backup frequently--turn on the Make BackUp option as
Anne
said, but also backup frequently yourself.

I am not sure what difference frames may make to any of these options.
Theoretically, none, I think.


On 6/21/05 11:49 AM, "Jeff" wrote:

Hi (using Word 2002 in XP).

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so
I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various
times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a
separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking
for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as
a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing
in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that
master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is
that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the
chapters
in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with
the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm
considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that
might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference
in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: <http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/>
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ:

 

[Jeff]

The original images are all elsewhere and I never do anything with them in
Word except reduce them to fit (not cropping, but using the corner anchors)
and removing the default borders from the frames. The reason I insert them
in Word now is because I have reference links (not sure of the exact term
for it) in the text to their figure numbers.

Good to know about the red X.

 

[Jeff]

Great tips. Thanks.

1. If you use drawing objects, please, please, please do it in PowerPoint
and group them, then copy and paste as a picture into your Word doc.

I actually work on the images in Paint Shop Pro and then transfer them. Do
you mention PSP just as an example or because it has a particular intrinsic
value? They are not drawings but mostly scanned images or photos.

5. Never save it to a lesser version--not an important doc like this. It
tends to bloat the doc.

What does this mean?

7. Unless your "desktop publishing" it now, don't put the pictures in
until
you're done writing.

Unfortunately that does not work well for me.

Thank you.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Jeff

I only recently discovered frames which is why I asked the question since
they add complexity, and yes I am running text around the frames and their
captions. The illustrations are mostly photographs. I insert them into Word
using Insert/picture/from file. Is that the best way to do it?

OK, if you want text flowing around, you need to use either a table cell
or a frame. A textbox won't do, beceause Word has a habit of not
"finding" the captions in there (which makes your table of figures
rather useless! ).

A frame might not lend as many options concerning "flow-around", but it
has another benefit that tables don't offer: you can make a frame part
of a style, say, the Caption style. Type your caption text, apply the
style (which frames it and positions the frame in the predefined way),
then, with your cursor at the start of the frame, insert (from file) the
picture.

Greetinx
Robert

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Resizing also bloats your files, I believe.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Anne Troy]

Hee hee, Jeff...

1. I mentioned PPT just because not everybody has graphics apps. If you're
using PSP, it's fine. You're exporting to JPG first, though, right?

5. There's options to save to, for instance, Word 97. When you do this, Word
can actually save BOTH versions, which bloats the file size. You're probably
not doing it.

7. I hear you. Me either. I am actually in the processing of writing an
eBook for DTP in Word.

Good luck, okay?

*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[Jeff]

Thank you very much Anne. Its all very helpful.

 

[Jeff]

Thank you.

 

[Chip Orange]

Since we're talking about master doc feature here, I'd like to ask:

We have a need to create a large doc collaboratively, with many authors
working on sub doc portions concurrently. We need someone to routinely be
able to put the entire doc together, print it, and otherwise review it.

We are being (the IT shop) asked repeatedly about master doc feature, and
are passing on the advice we read here that it's not safe, but we have
little to offer in its place except copy and paste (our formatting
requirements are rigid).

Any suggestions on how we should best accomplish this?

Thanks.

Chip



p.s.

We did have a short try with includetext fields, and found on ocasions they
too caused problems with improper formatting of the final doc.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Use a common template and you can include parts that are in separate
documents using IncludeText fields. Look at Steve Hudson's methods for using
Master Documents and decide whether you would be able to enforce following
them.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.