Advice about Master documents

[Chip Orange]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will go read the material you referenced.

What we found yesterday, when we tried IncludeText, was that it immediately
had formatting issues when you did an "update field" in the "master". In
particular, it translated invisible style separators into visible paragraph
marks, and so, changed the line break and pagination where they were used in
the subdoc.

Are there known issues with IncludeText like this? Are style separators so
unusual that if we eliminated their use, we could count on IncludeText
otherwise working ok?

Thanks.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Interesting....

IncludeText fields have a little weirdness with filepaths, and fields within
fields:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm#FilePaths
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm#FieldsWithinFields

But the MVPs just helped me put together this article, and no one mentioned
your problem, so thanks much, that is a biggie for long documents. What
version of Word was that?

Alternatively, here is Charles' other recommendation:
Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html

DM

 

[Chip Orange]

We're using Word XP.

We reviewed Steve's article, but sense we have such a large number of
relatively inexperienced word processors (usually engineers, accountants,
analysts, etc.), who wish to use this, we think it unlikely that all rules
could be followed all the time.

Thanks for the reports on the other IncludeText issues.

Chip

Interesting....

IncludeText fields have a little weirdness with filepaths, and fields within
fields:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm#FilePaths
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm#FieldsWithinFields

But the MVPs just helped me put together this article, and no one mentioned
your problem, so thanks much, that is a biggie for long documents. What
version of Word was that?

Alternatively, here is Charles' other recommendation:
Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html

DM

Thanks for the suggestion. I will go read the material you referenced.

What we found yesterday, when we tried IncludeText, was that it immediately
had formatting issues when you did an "update field" in the "master". In
particular, it translated invisible style separators into visible paragraph
marks, and so, changed the line break and pagination where they were used in
the subdoc.

Are there known issues with IncludeText like this? Are style separators so
unusual that if we eliminated their use, we could count on IncludeText
otherwise working ok?

Thanks.


routinely
be

--
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]

I haven't used style separators so hadn't bumped into this.

Version of Word?

Consistent for all users?


--
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!
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[Jonathan West]

Hi Chip,

You might want to take a look at this article

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

--
Regards
Jonathan West - Word MVP
www.intelligentdocuments.co.uk
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[Chip Orange]

Thanks ... hmmm ... I like this idea the best so far. I'll suggest it,
along with the necessary changes to our internal policies and procedures to
allow for it (for instance, we currently have a requirement that the
finished product be a single document).

Thanks again,

Chip

 

[Chip Orange]

Word version is 2002; can't say about consistancy as we are just now trying
out IncludeText fields and are in a bit of a panic here.

The first attempt/use looks ok, it's only the update of the field that shows
up the problem.

We have found a similar issue with style separators if text has its format
cleared (before applying new styles). We have a macro that does this, then
copies and pastes the text, then applies new formatting in the new document.
Somewhere along the way, the style separators become separate paragraph
marks.

I suspect the operation which clears the formatting.

Chip

 

[Chip Orange]

I should clarify this by saying the problem I reported here only occurs if
the \* MergeFormat switch is used in the IncludeText field. If not, then we
only have the problems Daiya mentions in her article to deal with!

Chip

 

[Charles Kenyon]

The MergeFormat switch should be removed in most cases.
--
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.

 

[Chip Orange]

Thanks. It was accidentally added as we chose the "insert field" menu
choice the first time we experimented with this idea, and that adds it by
default (where-as Insert File and selecting "as link" does not).

Now, if we put all the files in the same dir, and add a little macro
support, the only problem I am worried about, and need to study further, is
Daiya's report of "fields within fields", which we do use (placing a field
result inside of a TC field).

We may go back to using this for our multi-person, multi-file project
instead of Jonathan's RD approach, as this does provide us with a single
large document at the end (once all IncludeText fields have been unlinked),
and that ends up being important to us.

Thanks for help from all.

Chip

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Thanks. It was accidentally added as we chose the "insert field" menu
choice the first time we experimented with this idea, and that adds it by
default (where-as Insert File and selecting "as link" does not).

Thanks very much for that tip--I'll add that note. That's very valuable to
know, and glad you chased down the cause of the style separator problem.

(PS--I'm going to be off the groups and probably unable to follow the rest
of this thread, but if you find anything else you think ought to be in the
article, or any errors, feel free to drop me a note offgroup to ensure it
doesn't get lost--the article was the collected comments of many but not
produced in the midst of extensive testing as you seem to be doing. I
assume you can see my address to un-spam-proof it. Otherwise, I'll check the
thread via google in a few weeks anyhow, assuming I remember.)

Daiya