I agree. Word tried to make master docs in order to try and match WP, which did handle them (mostly) reasonably well. But Word master docs have ALWAYS been a disaster. They have never been well engineered. And yeah, whoever put that gong show into Word should have had their paychecks printed out from a master doc, with every single character of the check in separate sub-docs....

Good luck with that. After more than a decade of grief I wish they would just kill it. No one will miss it.

As for FrameMaker, quite a different kettle of fish. Great great application! Sigh. I also miss using Quark. I disliked Word also trying to be a graphic layout application. Mind you it is better than it used to be, but really, keep the darn thing a top level word processor.