Single-sourcing and use MS-Word

[Deanne]

My team is looking into moving to single sourcing. Is
anyone doing this successfully with Word? It seems like
most of the references I'm seeing are to Framemaker. If
you are you using a third-party application or database,
which are you using and what are your experiences with it?

Thanks for any guidance!
Deanne

 

[David Harrison]

Hi Deanne

Yes, I'm also at the bottom of a learning curve to use
WORD for single sourcing - it can be done but probably
depends on how many variations you need.

I have a small family of manuals that share about 80%
content but have subtle variations for the rest. I'm
trying to do this by putting an "ASK" field at the front
of the document. (for instance "Does this manual include
a Networking facility - Y or N?")
Then I add sections about newtorking through the manual
by using an IF field, so (If networking = "Y" "put this
bit of text" "") The "" puts nothing of course.
Am finding that perseverance is starting to pay off and
you can use the IF field to put in picture variations as
well. Go to watch your formatting though - especially if
you're including page breaks in the if-text.
Happy to chat off-newsgroup if you want to discuss
further.

regards

David Harrison