MS Word question re subdocuments.

[clut]

I have created a system whereby a document is created by starting with a base master document, and then inserting 17 individual subdocuments via code to create a single document.

This all works fine, and the subdocuments are sectioned off nicely to allow for edits to these documents to cascade down to all other documents that include them.

However. Once a document is final, and sent out a customer, it needs to remain unchanged. We do PDF the docs and send the customer the PDF, but I can't have the Word documents changing because someone edits a subdocument elsewhere. This would lead to the situation where we no longer have the original word document from which a PDF was created.

I need to find a way to 'bake' a word document to take it from a collection of subdocuments back into a single (not reliant on anything else) document.

Any suggestions??? I havn't been able to find a way of doing this yet.

 

[Macropod]

Hi clut,

First off, if you're using Word's Master Documents feature, don't! That way lies corruption and endless grief. You can get pretty much the same functionality by linking documents via INCLUDETEXT fields and using RD fields to build TOCs.

If you use INCLUDETEXT fields and using RD fields to build TOCs, you then have the option of locking the target document (via Ctrl-F11), or unlinking it (via Ctrl-F9). If you lock it you can also unlock later if necessary (via Ctrl-Shift-F11). All you need to do is to select the parts you want to lock/unlock/unlink. Also if you use INCLUDETEXT fields, you can do your editing in either the source document or the target document - selecting the linked part and pressing Ctrl-Shift-F7 propagates the update from the target to the source.

Cheers

 

[clut]

Macropod,

Many thanks for your replies.
I did start by using INCLUDETEXT fields, but I was having all sorts of formatting issues, which is why I reverted to using outlines and sub-documents.

Saying that, the problem I'm not encountering with subdocs (i.e not being able to 'fix' or 'bake' the document seems far more serious than formatting issues with the INCLUDETEXT solution.

Could you enlighten me with regards to the RD fields? I've not encountered these before.

Thanks