As discussed in the other thread, stay well away from Master Documents.

If you need to combine all these component documents into a single document (e.g. for printing), Word can do that quite easily via INCLUDETEXT fields. To do that, simply create a target document based on the same template all the source documents are using and, in the target document, insert separate INCLUDETEXT fields pointing to each of the source documents.

Similarly, if all you need is to create a common Table of Contents (e.g. for printing), Word can do that quite easily via RD fields. To do that, simply create a target document based on the same template all the source documents are using and, in the target document, insert a TOC field followed by separate RD fields pointing to each of the source documents.

Either approach is quite safe and has worked reliably for decades.

Whichever approach (master documents or INCLUDETEXT/RD fields) you use, I do hope your contributors are all using the same template for their component documents and that they're using Word's Styles properly; that makes any such exercise far more consistent as to output formatting.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]