1. Yes, Master/Subs in Word still sucks.
2. Don't worry about corruption of your one document. Instead, why don't you
turn on creating a backup file under Tools--Options, Save tab?
3. How big is your document? When I was writing my book, I used the document
map feature to move around 'cause inevitably, I kept inserting new pieces of
info that belonged here and there.
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~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com


"Jeff" wrote in message
...
Hi (using Word 2002 in XP).

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking
for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the chapters
in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

--

Jeff Stevens
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam