A
Andy Glew
Q: can Word subdocuments be shared between several
Word documents?
In the past I have made extensive use of Word's master document /
subdocument capability. It is one of Word's potentially best
features[*], especially its integration with Outline mode.
Now I am writing a "suite" of related documents. They need to
share several common sections, by inclusion, not by reference.
I want to know if I can create a subdocuments, and share this same
subdocument between several Master Documents. I am worried that
Word's subdocuments may contain pointers to the Master Document they
were originally embedded in, and/or cached section numbers, etc.,
that are not easily fixed.
Simple tests show that it works. But simple tests don't reveal
the presence of potentially major gotchas.
This is not an unreasonable request. I having been sharing
subdocuments (subfiles) between multiple master documents
since the days of nroff and TeX.
---
Note:
[*] I say "potentially best features" because, while I love Word's
subdocument handling, I was plagued by bugs relating to it. On a
fairly regular basis the master document would become unsaveable or
unprintable. This was in 2003-mid2004. I could hope that various bugs
have been fixed - indeed, at least one was fixed by an upgrade I
installed during this last period of heavy usage of subdocuments -
except for the fact that my current employer's IT department has an
even more stale version of Word than I used in 2003-mid2004.
---
While I am at it, I would also like to ask: is there a limit
to how deep one can nest sub-sub-documents?
All of Microsoft's docs talk as if they cannot be nested,
but I have nested sub-documents many levels deep.
I am sure at least 4; I suspect more.
However, I had many problems with subdocument related bugs.
I backed off nesting, fearing that it might be the cause.
Word documents?
In the past I have made extensive use of Word's master document /
subdocument capability. It is one of Word's potentially best
features[*], especially its integration with Outline mode.
Now I am writing a "suite" of related documents. They need to
share several common sections, by inclusion, not by reference.
I want to know if I can create a subdocuments, and share this same
subdocument between several Master Documents. I am worried that
Word's subdocuments may contain pointers to the Master Document they
were originally embedded in, and/or cached section numbers, etc.,
that are not easily fixed.
Simple tests show that it works. But simple tests don't reveal
the presence of potentially major gotchas.
This is not an unreasonable request. I having been sharing
subdocuments (subfiles) between multiple master documents
since the days of nroff and TeX.
---
Note:
[*] I say "potentially best features" because, while I love Word's
subdocument handling, I was plagued by bugs relating to it. On a
fairly regular basis the master document would become unsaveable or
unprintable. This was in 2003-mid2004. I could hope that various bugs
have been fixed - indeed, at least one was fixed by an upgrade I
installed during this last period of heavy usage of subdocuments -
except for the fact that my current employer's IT department has an
even more stale version of Word than I used in 2003-mid2004.
---
While I am at it, I would also like to ask: is there a limit
to how deep one can nest sub-sub-documents?
All of Microsoft's docs talk as if they cannot be nested,
but I have nested sub-documents many levels deep.
I am sure at least 4; I suspect more.
However, I had many problems with subdocument related bugs.
I backed off nesting, fearing that it might be the cause.