How big should a word file be?

[Woody Splawn]

I use WORD to create indexes for myself. The outlining is very helpful in
this respect. I have one index however that is about 50 pages long and is
650mb in size. I could easily double this if I were to combine some of my
indexes into one file. Would this be wisdom to do? It seems to me that
there may be a point where the file size or number of pages is just too much
to be handled efficiently. Am I reaching that point?

Thank You.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Woody

I use WORD to create indexes for myself. The outlining is very helpful in
this respect. I have one index however that is about 50 pages long and is
650mb in size. I could easily double this if I were to combine some of my
indexes into one file. Would this be wisdom to do? It seems to me that
there may be a point where the file size or number of pages is just too much
to be handled efficiently. Am I reaching that point?

As a start, could you describe exactly what an "index" is to you? Are
you refering to the result of an "INDEX" field? And what do you mean
with "outlining"? Are you using XE fields or concordance files to create
your index?

Anyway, usually you don't have an index in a separate file, but even if
you have, 650 MByte is out of the question for either a raw text file of
50 pages or a field result (no matter how long), so something fichy is
going on here. Hence my questions.

Greetinx
..bob
...Word-MVP