Hi, Nalaka.
To begin with:
Word offers to let you create multiple documents, then create a
"master document" that will include the text from the other documents.
From bad experiences that I have read about in more than one place, I
would not recommend that method.
Instead, I would create a single document that contains a copy of all
the individual work books.
If you need to keep the original work books in separate documents, for
example, for maintenance by different groups of people, you can format
each work book so that you can include them in a combined document in
the future, with little or additional work.
First, format each work book: View the footer (View, Header and
Footer) and move to the footer using the down arrow. Type the work
book number (for example, 2) then a dash, and then insert a page code.
(You can click on the # symbol on the header/footer toolbar.
You can format the sequence, for example, Ctrl-E to center it, or
Ctrl-R to place it on the right hand side. You can also add other
text such as the title of the work book.
Repeat this step for each work book.
(Word offers another page numbering method, by clicking Insert / Page
numbers. I don't recommend this method for several reasons. In this
case, it gets confusing to add the numbers to distinguish between
different work books. The method I'm suggesting is more robust.)
Next, you are ready to import all the sections into your main
document.
First create a new document. Then add the cover page to this
document. It will not have a page number by default, which is what
you want.
Next, insert a section break after the cover page. To do this, click
Insert, Break, then under Section Break types, select Next page, then
OK.
(At this point, It might become helpful to see the section breaks.
Use the "ShowAll" command, by clicking on the ¶ mark in the main
toolbar.)
Next, import each work book (click Insert, File, and find each work
book). Before you insert, make sure that the cursor is located after
the last section break. After you insert each file, add a new section
break.
Finally, the index:
There are three parts to creating an index.
The first part is identify the significant topics and mark the
sections of the text that should appear in an index. This requires
skill and judgment, and cannot done well by a program.
The second part is to create a field code for the index. Typically,
you put this code in a section at the end of the combined document.
Finally, whenever you request, Word will use the marked text and the
instructions in the code to generate a new index.
For more information on indexing, press F1 in your Word program and
search for the phrase, "create an index". You'll probably have some
more questions, but that should get you started.
If you are maintaining the work books in separate documents, as
mentioned above, you can mark the text in the separate work books, and
create a single index in the final combined document.
Steven
