I am looking for ideas for ready made sw / add-on (free or paid) or for ideas as how to create such a sw a solution to the problem described below.

The Problem:
I need to create multiple documents which have a common base.
However they have differences in many places. .
The document are “living document”, meaning there are changes to both common and non-common sections.
I do not wish to manage each document separately since changes to common parts would need to be done to each document.



My Vision
What I envision is a single Master document from which I will be able to create different Flavors. For example, to generate flavor #1 I shall use the Master document and view it in a filter showing common + #1 content and will then save it with only that content.
With this concept, differentiated parts will need some marking to allow identifying in which flavor they should be present.

Examples for Differences:
- text within paragraphs
- text within tables
- entire table line
- titles

Thanks ,

I would investigate tagging the content in some way. Firstly I would try Rich Text Content Controls but your success will only be possible if you don't partially overlap the tags. You can mark each CC by using the Tag property and then have a macro that shows or hides those ranges.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

First, beware of the term Master Document. You want nothing to do with a Word Master Document. Master Documents "Feature"

Look into AutoText and AutoText fields.
Automated Boilerplate Using Microsoft Word (AutoText, AutoCorrect, Building Blocks, and more)

For individual documents that need to repeat custom text in multiple places (i.e. names, titles, amounts, dates) look at Repeating Data Using Document Properties Content Controls and Other Mapped Content Controls.