Managing two documents with some small differences

[Ted Anderson]

I am writing a software user manual. My company has two different versions
of the software. The two manuals have the same general content with the
same number of chapters. Many of the chapters are going to be identical in
both manuals and some of the chapters are very different. I am using a
master document to manage all of that.

Here is my question: one of the chapters can be virtually identical in both
manuals, with the exception of a few sentences and phrases. I don't want to
make two separate subdocuments for this chapter, because then any changes to
the content will have to be done on each. Can I use an "If" field to do
this somehow (maybe based on the value of the "Subject" field)?

 

[Graham Mayor]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

You can certainly insert text conditionally based on the subject property of
the document eg
{ IF { DOCPROPERTY Subject } = "Version A" "This is Version A" "This is
version B"}

The texts "This is Version A" and "This is version B" can be any element
that can be inserted into a document.

I think I would be inclined to make one manual as a single document with the
variations in a second document and conditionally insert the variable texts
using IncludeText fields to call the bookmarked items. There is a variety of
methods for determining which version you wish to print, DocProperties is
one - or you could use a simple ASK field and conditional REF fields to
place the variable texts.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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