I'm working on a project where I have created approximately 45-50 short documents to document different procedures in a large department. Each document is 1-5 pages long, with the average only about 2 pages.

I would like to move them all into one large document so that I can have a TOC and index of all of them, but I can't because different individuals will be responsible for updating different sections, which is why I made the individual docs in the first place.

So what I'm thinking of is this: Keeping the individual docs separate so that people can check them out and update them without holding everyone else up. When it's time to reprint the whole collection, pull them into a master doc, update the TOC, and replace the index.

Would that work? Or would it fall prey to the old corruption problems of the master document feature? I'm using Word 2013. Some of them might be using Word 2010 or Office 365.

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.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks for the quick reply, Macropod. As a FrameMaker user, I find it frustrating when the client wants me to use Word. I'm fine with Word, but the one thing I've always had problems with is handling multiple documents.

I use field codes in footers (date, page number, filename), but have never used the INCLUDETEXT one. Had to do a little research to understand what was going on, how to see field codes versus text, and so on. A lot of information out there is related to earlier versions of Word, so I had to make sure they worked for 2013.

If anyone's interested, here are two articles that helped orient me:

http://www.quepublishing.com/article...27853&seqNum=2

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...in=HA102749146

Also, I created my "source" file (the one with all the INCLUDETEXT commands) in the same directory as the files I'm including. That way I can make the INCLUDETEXT a little shorter, using a relative path:

{ INCLUDETEXT "Introduction.docx" \* MERGEFORMAT }
{ INCLUDETEXT "RequestTimeOff.docx" \* MERGEFORMAT }
{ INCLUDETEXT "PayrollPolicies.docx" \* MERGEFORMAT }

Whilst that will work provided everything remains in the current folder, you're liable to find it'll break when the files are moved to a different folder, especially if different Word versions become involved. To make this workable across all folders & Word versions, using your first example:
1. insert /../ thus:
{ INCLUDETEXT "/../Introduction.docx" \* MERGEFORMAT }
2. Press Ctrl-F9 before the first /, to create a pair of field braces, thus:
{ INCLUDETEXT "{ }/../Introduction.docx" \* MERGEFORMAT }
3. Fill in between the field braces, thus:
{ INCLUDETEXT "{FILENAME /p}/../Introduction.docx" \* MERGEFORMAT }

The same approach can be used for HYPERLINK fields, RD fields and INCLUDEPICTURE fields, though you need to at least temporarily switch to the .doc format to be able to access INCLUDEPICTURE field codes.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks so much for your help so far.

I now need to create just a separate index, which, of course, the RD field should help with.

So I tried it with the following RD statements, but when I run the TOC, it says it can't find the files. They're in the same directory as the file I'm in.

{ RD "Introduction.docx" }
{ RD "RequestTimeOff.docx" }
{ RD "PayrollPolicies.docx" }

I notice that RD has a /f switch, so I tried all of the following combinations, but they don't work, either:

{ RD /f "Introduction.docx" }
{ RD "Introduction.docx" /f }
{ RD "/f Introduction.docx" }

This shouldn't be this difficult

Here is the reference for the RD field.

Cross-posted on Windows Secrets.