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I have evaluated InDesign and ruled it out. It seems to me that the tool is best suited for magazines or books that need to present content created elsewhere. If I had to publish a book or a magazine, I'd jump on the opportunity to use InDesign. However, it seems to be a poor tool for creating and editing content. As a technical writer, what you want is a tool that helps you set your presentation rules, and then does the lay out job for you, not one that helps you get creative with presentation on every single page.
I also have a question for you. Why have your boss ruled out FrameMaker? Is it just becauseit is the tool that he/she knows? Did you present all the benefits to them or did you just present it as your personal choice? It seems to me like the best tool to handle documentation, especially for the large documents. I can somewhat settle for Word when working on small documents (20 pages is my own personal limit for sanity, over that dealing with cross-references and numbering drives me nuts). If my bosses forced me to use Word, I would show them the two tools working side by side, just to make sure they see how much faster and consistent and can be with FrameMaker.
If you absolutely have to work with Word, I'd say try to seperate the huge doc into smaller pieces. That's what the previous tech writer here did to keep her sanity. You should have seen her face when I told her this weekend (she's on maternity leave) that I merged some of them with FrameMaker, her first comment was about how hard it would be to handle formatting. I can't wait for her to come back and see this. By the way, I think she can't wait either ;).
France Baril
Rédactrice Technique / Technical Writer
IXIASOFT
(514) 279-4942
france -dot- baril -at- ixiasoft -dot- com
Ce qui se conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire viennent aisément. (Boileau)
