Large documents in Word for Mac

[Emanuel Vahid Towfigh]

Hi there,

currently, I am preparing a document with some 300 pages. As it is divided
in different chapters, I have so far worked on 5 different documents, and it
was nice to handle. However, now I need to merge these documents, so that I
can insert cross-references, table of contents and an index.

Up to now, when I needed to print a draft of that document, I used to
assemble the parts as subdocuments in a master document. This, however, is a
little annoying, as Word does not save the settings for the footnotes, that
is the footnote separator and the footnote continuation notice. As these
have effect on the amount of text that fits on my pages this is a pain, as I
have to redo these settings every time I open the doc and then word needs to
repaginate... -- Is there any workaround known for this problem?

Now in connection with this problem, my second question is how experiences
are with large documents (as I said, around 300 pages). I am working on a
PowerBook 867 MHz with 512 MB RAM, and I have loads of footnotes and
cross-references. Does it make sense to unify all in one document (like in
one *real* document, not just subdocuments), as long as I still need to work
on it, e.g. inserting cross-references?

Any insight is highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot! And cheers,

Emanuel.

 

[Michael Vilain]

currently, I am preparing a document with some 300 pages. As it is divided
in different chapters, I have so far worked on 5 different documents, and it
was nice to handle. However, now I need to merge these documents, so that I
can insert cross-references, table of contents and an index.

Up to now, when I needed to print a draft of that document, I used to
assemble the parts as subdocuments in a master document. This, however, is a
little annoying, as Word does not save the settings for the footnotes, that
is the footnote separator and the footnote continuation notice. As these
have effect on the amount of text that fits on my pages this is a pain, as I
have to redo these settings every time I open the doc and then word needs to
repaginate... -- Is there any workaround known for this problem?

Now in connection with this problem, my second question is how experiences
are with large documents (as I said, around 300 pages). I am working on a
PowerBook 867 MHz with 512 MB RAM, and I have loads of footnotes and
cross-references. Does it make sense to unify all in one document (like in
one *real* document, not just subdocuments), as long as I still need to work
on it, e.g. inserting cross-references?

Any insight is highly appreciated.

In Word 5.1 days, I had each chapter in a separate file setup to point
to the next file. I had to hard-code the chapter # in each document. I
didn't try to keep the footnotes unique, but such a stream of linked
documents could be indexed and Word produced an acceptable TOC. I
imagine Word X and 2004 still have these features, kludgy as they are.
Luckily, I never encountered problems with file corruption on large
documents. I suggest you stay with this methodology for producing your
document--relatively small, linked files.

Word has never been very good for doing large documents of this nature.
The more complex the document, the more tedious Word becomes. This is
where Framemaker worked very well, especially in technical publishing.
Unfortunately, Adobe bought it to kill it. But it still runs in Classic
and copies can be had from eBay.

I think you've 'outgrown' Word for this use and should investigate other
document processing systems that work better for large documents if
you're unhappy with Word's way of doing things. Otherwise, I think
you'll have to live with Word's limitations.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Most important, which I cannot find even going back--*what* version of Word
are you using?

You've been warned against master documents on the longdocs ng, so I won't
repeat that. Do see my advice over there re posting to multiple groups,
please.

Theoretically, 300 pages in a single file is no problem, and is a better
idea than the kludges. Word will generate the TOC very nicely, I don't have
experience with the index, but I think it's fine. However, Word 2004 has a
cross-references bug--it will work, it will just drive you crazy. But
there's a workaround for that.

Pending further info....

Daiya

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Emmanuel:

currently, I am preparing a document with some 300 pages.

I thought you said "large" In Microsoft Word 2004, anything over 500
pages is "large", anything under than is just a normal document, and should
be treated the same way

As it is divided
in different chapters, I have so far worked on 5 different documents, and it
was nice to handle. However, now I need to merge these documents, so that I
can insert cross-references, table of contents and an index.

Simply use Insert>File to add your five files to the text of a new document.
That will combine them all as a single document and save you enormous
amounts of trouble. Yes, there are other ways of doing it, but for a
document of that size, you don't need them.

Up to now, when I needed to print a draft of that document, I used to
assemble the parts as subdocuments in a master document. This, however, is a
little annoying, as Word does not save the settings for the footnotes, that
is the footnote separator and the footnote continuation notice. As these
have effect on the amount of text that fits on my pages this is a pain, as I
have to redo these settings every time I open the doc and then word needs to
repaginate... -- Is there any workaround known for this problem?

No. The footnote properties are a "Document" property. I am assuming that
you are using the "throw-away master document" technique? This means you
discard the master document after each use. When you do, you discard the
document-level settings in it.

The alternative would be to keep the master document in service. If you
were to make that mistake, as Daiya has warned, you would inevitably get
document corruption after a few edits.

You could use a macro to instantly reset your footnote properties in the
master document, and that's what I would do. This means using an Attached
Template to store settings for the master document. Look up Templates in
the help, and I suggest that you do not use Normal template for the purpose.
Or if you do, keep lots of backups. Normal template tends to die from time
to time, so you really need to have a working system that enables you to
throw it away without cost when it does. Look up the Organizer in the Help
and learn to use that to provide backups for your Normal Template.

Now in connection with this problem, my second question is how experiences
are with large documents (as I said, around 300 pages). I am working on a
PowerBook 867 MHz with 512 MB RAM, and I have loads of footnotes and
cross-references.

That's too slow for long or complex document work. I have a 1.2 GHz iBook
with 1GB of memory, and it's too slow for serious work also. Your PowerBook
will go a lot better if you double the memory. However, Word also needs a
fast motherboard and a fast hard disk to perform well, and no laptop has
those.

Does it make sense to unify all in one document (like in
one *real* document, not just subdocuments), as long as I still need to work
on it, e.g. inserting cross-references?

Yes. However you will have a particular problem with cross-references in
Word 2004, due to the introduction of the ATSUI text engine, which slows the
insertion of cross-references down to a crawl. If you can, use Word 2001 or
Word X for cross-referencing, or keep your eye on
http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm

I've just written an article and tool to partially address the problem. The
article is currently being reviewed prior to publication.

Cheers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410