RE: Using master documents in MS Word

["Steve Hudson" <cruddy -at- optushome -dot- com -dot- au>]

As usual the Heretic dissents from established opinions and any MVP. Our
very own tech whirler mag has a wonderful (and the only one in the world)
article on using the publishing gimmick called Masters. It was written by
someone completely insane of course, as sanity and Masters have no
relationship at all.

Now, chargen forth to thy problem and all even :-)

1) Word 97 is very friggin dangerous with Masters. It inspired 99% of the
principles behind my article.

2) Your lead writer never inserted as relative paths? Please get him a copy
of this free article and force feed it to him how to insert RELATIVE LINKS.
Long story short - they must be in the same sub-dir as the master unless you
want VBA assistance which is also located in the same article.

3) Using the info in the article you can write something to cross-convert
the bad links to relative or else you could fork out for myself or someone
else to write it for you.

4) Most of your 'recreate' problems (which indicate no need for any payments
2 a 3rd party) will be fixed by my article. If they don't, feel free to
email me. I'm not available for phone work tonight coz I'm already "tired
and emotional".

<User indicates complete amazement at an almost sane post under the present
conditions>

5) Please DO upgrade to Word 2k if you can. Buy someone's else's license if
necc. Its the current "last great Word release". Do avoid XP or later. So do
it NOW NOW NOW!!! (anyone else reading with 97 - buy 2k NOW before it
totally disappears - I belive MS no longer will sell it direct!)

As the article states, they are not much more unstable than a document their
total size anyway so it's actually a desirable development tool.

Steve Hudson - Word Heretic, Sydney, Australia
Email: heretic -at- tdfa -dot- com     Blog: blog.tdfa.com (*NEW*)
Live Advice: http://www.keen.com/The+Word+Heretic
You agree by writing to me personally that any material can be reused
publicly unless you explicitly disclaim it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Laura J. Lockhart

Couple questions here, because I'm trying to decide whether an upgrade
will help, hinder, or make no difference. I'm working on a freelance
project -- an engineering report -- in which the lead writer has created
a master document in MS Word 2002, and all of his colleagues have
written their sections as subdocuments in various versions of Word.  I
was given the files on CD, which I've copied to my hard drive, which has
MS Word 97.  All of the subdoc links no longer work, because their
pathnames reference folders on his hard drive.  I can't edit the links
because "renaming" means renaming the file, which it can't find to start
out with.

I've tried to just add new subdocuments, which I did successfully one
time but can't seem to do for the remainder of my list (about 13
sizeable files with pix).  I keep reading that I need to assign headings
before I can enter the subdocs, but I didn't really want to do that
until I could look at the thing as a whole (why must a subdoc always
require a heading?!).  I'm contemplating some other ways I could fudge
my way through this, but I've got a very tight deadline (1 week to
format and do first-level edits) and would like to be as efficient as
possible.  I must be doing something wrong, so any tips or advice would
be greatly appreciated!

Does anyone have enough experience working with Word 2002 (or XP?) to
know if an upgrade would simplify my life?  I'm hesitant to upgrade
unnecessarily, because one of my clients has given me proprietary
editing software that, I'm told, becomes quirky when run off the newer
versions of Word.


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