Most of the people posting here don’t know much about master documents,
and thus may not have any help to offer, because:
Why Master Documents corrupt:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm
How to recover a Master Document:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm
Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/wordhomepage.html
You might also check these links for potential workarounds:
Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148
See the “Number Pages Across Files†section at this link:
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MiscFram.htm
IncludeText Fields can partially substitute for the Master Document
feature—for an introduction to them, see here:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/includetextfields.htm
Word experts generally advise combining long documents into one file, if
possible, and you will find more information on controlling those big
files here:
http://daiya.mvps.org/bookword.htm
I have designed headings with outlining that work fine when I apply the
styles in the Master Doc to the sub docs. However, after saving all docs and
reopeining the master doc & expanding sub docs, several of the headings are
no longer there. I have to reapply the style